r i ad ecL^, Th entei In are e prop. theC "I Meth Eimt Al in A J Th Btudc whicl Grair everj dent, Jbtro A C th lai ne IN MEMORIAM BERNARD MOSES Sheldon <& Company's Text -"Books. STODDARD'3 FULL MATHEMATICAL SERIES EMBRACES THE FOLLOWING BOOKS : Stoddard's Primary Pictorial Arithmetic ....... $0 30 Stoddard's Juvenile Mental Arithmetic ......... 25 Stoddard's American Intellectual Arithmetic.. 50 Stoddard's Rudiments of Arithmetic ............ 50 Stoddard's Combination School Arithmetic ---- 80 Stoddard's New Practical Arithmetic .......... 1 00 Stoddard's Complete Arithmetic ................ 1 25 " I have again examined ' Stoddard's Complete Arithmetic,' and find my first impressions" of its merits folly confirmed. It' I were called upon to recommend an Arithmetic for jreneral use in our schools. I should unhesitatingly recom- mend ' Stoddard'8 Complete Arithmetic.' "Prof. OLNEY, of Michigan Unl- STODDARD'S SHORTER COURSE, The Teacher's Combination Series. A full course for Graded Schools is obtained in the three books, the Primary Pic- torial, Combination School, and Complete Arithmetics, price 2.25. For Academies, the Complete and Intellectual furnish a high school course, for $1.75. For District Schools, the Com- bination School Arithmetic alone will be a good, practical text- book of Mental and Written Arithmetic, for 80 cents. Stoddard's Complete School Algebra, for the use of Schools and Academies. This book will have many new and important features, and will, it is believed, fully sustain the high reputation Stoddard's Arithmetics now enjoy. 12nio. Price $1 25. Nearly ready. The Higher Algebra and advanced looks of Stoddard's Mathe- matical Series mil soon be puUishcd. Stoddard's Series of Mathematical Text-Books have many fea- tures which- justify the high estimation in which they are held by teachers. The use of these books induces careful attention and continuous application of the mind, at the same time relieving study of its usual irksomeness, by such lucid explanations and a proper presentation of the subjects as make them apprehended easily by scholars. Any of the. above sent by mall, post-paid, on receipt of price. y *1 A SMALLER HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE. FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS. EDITED BY WILLIAM SMITH, LL. D., AND HENRY T. TUCKER MAN. NEW YORK : SHELDON AND COMPANY, 498 AND 500 BROADWAY. 1870. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by SHELDON AND COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. TEXT BOOKS ON FNC-.LTSH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. SHAW'S COMPLETE MANUAL OF ENGLISH LIT- ERATURE. Edited, with Notes and Illustrations, by WILLIAM SMITH, LL. D. With a Sketch of AMERICAN LITERATURE, by HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. 540 pages. Price #2.00. SHAW'S SMALLER HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICA^ LITERATURE. By WILLIAM SMITH, LL. D., and HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. 268 pages. With References to CHOICE SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE. Price $1.25: CHOICE SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. With References to SHAW'S COMPLETE MANUAL OF ENGLISH LITERATI-HF,. Selected from the chief English writers, by THOMAS B. SHAW, A. M., and WILLIAM SMITH, LL. D. Enlarged and adapted to the Use of American Students, by BENJAMIN N. MARTIN, D> D., L. . D. -477 P'iges. Price $2.00. CHOICE SPECIMENS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. Selected from American Authors. With Notes, etc., by BENJAMIN N. MARTIN, D. D., L. H. D., Professor of Philosophy and Logic in the University of the City of New York. (In press.) STEREOTYPED AT THE BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY, No. 19 SPKING LANE. PREFACE. THE important position which the study of English Litera- ture is now taking in Education has led to the publication of this work and of the accompanying volume of " Choice Speci- mens of English Literature." Both books have been underta- ken at the request of many eminent teachers, and no pains have been spared to adapt them to the purpose for which they are designed, as elementary works to be used in schools. Neither will fully answer its object without the other. ; the two will be found to be of mutual assistance, the one as giving a rapid but trustworthy sketch of the lives of our chief writers, and of the successive influences which imparted to their writ- ings their peculiar character ; the other as supplying choice examples of the works themselves,, accompanied by all the explanations required for their perfect comprehension. In both volumes a large proportion of the space has been given to the great Writers, so as to impress upon the minds of pupils the most important facts in English Literature. The " History " has been drawn up by Mr. James Rowley, of Trinity College, Dublin, under the direction and superin- tendence of Dr. William Smith, and has been derived, though with many important additions and alterations, from Shaw's " Student's Manual " upon the same subject. All living writers are, for obvious reasons, excluded. W. S. THE publishers of Shaw's " MANUAL OF ENGLISH LITER- ATURE," being gratified at the favor with which that book has been received, as a revised and enlarged edition of Shaw's Outlines of English Literature, present herewith a smaller history, which is a Compend of English Literature, for gen- eral school use. Selections from the works of the authors named in this vol- ume, which illustrate their styles, are also issued as " CHOICE SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ; " and references, throughout this volume, will be found, in heavy-faced type, to the particular extracts in that volume which illustrate the authors of this. SHELDON & COMPANY. (4) CONTENTS. ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY. 9 II. ENGLISH LITERATURE TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 15 III. FROM THE CONQUEST TO GEOFFREY CHAUCER. . 23 IV. GEOFFREY CHAUCER 31 V. THE CONTEMPORARIES OF CHAUCER 47 VI. ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER. 55 VII. THE NON-DRAMATIC ELIZABETHAN POETS. ... 66 VIII. THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA 75 IX. SHAKSPEARE 90 X. THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. ...... 106 XI. THE PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD 115 XII. THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS 125 XIII; THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH 132 XIV. JOHN MILTON 137 XV. THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION 148 XVI. THE NEW DRAMA AND THE CORRECT POETS. . . 164 6 CONTENTS. XVII. THE SECOND REVOLUTION 174 XVIII. THE SO-CALLED AUGUSTAN POETS 183 XIX. THE ESSAYISTS 199 XX.' THE GREAT NOVELISTS 208 XXI. HISTORICAL, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND THEOLOGI- CAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 221 XXII. THE DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY 234. XXIII. WALTER SCOTT. .'."..' 249 XXIV. BYRON, MOORE, SHELLEY, AND OTHER. POETS. 258 XXV. THE LAKE SCHOOL. WORDSWORTH, COLE- RIDGE, AND SOUTHEY . 275 XXVI. THE MODERN NOVELISTS 284 XXVII. PROSE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CEN- TURY 297 LIST OF POETS LAUREATE 309 CONTENTS. 7 AMERICAN LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. Literature in the Colonies imitative. Relation of American to English Literature. Gradual Advancement of the United States in Letters. Their first Development theological. Writers in this Department. JONATHAN EDWARDS. Religiou. Controversy. WILLIAM E. CHANNING. Writings of the Clergy. Newspapers and School Books. Domestic Literature. Female Writers. Oratory. Revolu- tionary Eloquence. American Orators. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. DANIEL WEB- STER and others. EDWARD EVERETT. American History and Historians. JARED SPARKS. DAVID RAMSAY. GEORGE BANCROFT. HILDRETH. ELIOT. LOSSING. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. IRVING. WHEATON. COOPER. PARKMAN. . .311 CHAPTER II. Belles Lettres. Influence of British Essayists. FRANKLIN. DENNIE. Signs of Literary Improvement. JONATHAN OLDSTYLE. WASHINGTON IRVING. His Knickerbocker. Sketch-Book. His other Works. Popularity. Tour on the Prairies. Character as an Author. DANA. WILDE. HUDSON. GRISWOLD. LOWELL. WHIPPLE. TICKNOR. WALKER. WAYLAND. JAMES. EMERSON. Transcendentalists. MADAME OSSOLI. Emerson's Essays. ORVILLE DEWEY. Humorous Writers. Belles Lettres. TUDOR. WIRT. SANDS. FAY. WALSH. MITCHELL. KIMBALL. American Travellers. Causes of their Success as Wri- ters. Fiction. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. His Novels. JAMES FENIMORK COOPER. His Novels their Popularity and Characteristics. NATHANIEL HAW- THORNE. His Works and Genius. Other American Writers of Fiction. . . 321) CHAPTER III. POETRY. FRENEAU and the early Metrical Writers. MUMFORD, CLIFFTON, ALLSTON, and others. PIERPONT. DANA. HILLHOUSE. SPRAGUE. PERCIVAL. HALLECK. DRAKE. HOFFMAN. WILLIS. LONGFELLOW. HOLMES. LOWELL. BOKER. Favorite Single Poems. Descriptive Poetry. STREET, WHITTIER, and others. BRAINARD. Song-Writers. Other Poets. Female Poets. BRYANT. . . . 343 NOTE TO SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 361 INDEX TO ENGLISH LITERATURE. . 367 INDEX TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. . . . 371 NOTE. THROUGH this book the figures in plain type indicate dates, and the figures in heavy-faced type refer to the number of the selection in the " CHOICE SPECIMENS OP ENGLISH LIT- ERATURE," a volume of this series, which illustrates the authors named in this volume, and in Shaw's " COMPLETE MANUAL OF ENGLISH LITERATURE." (8) ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. i INTRODUCTORY. 1. THE most ancient inhabitants of the British 'Islands, con- cerning whom history has handed down to x.'S aoy^cxrta'n, infor- mation, were a branch of that Celtic race v,'Kich : r'ppear3 to hu'v^ once occupied a large portion of Western Europe. This race never attained more than a low degree of civilization a fact sufficiently indicated by its nomad and predatory mode of exist- ence, by the comparative absence of agriculture, and, above all, by the universal practice of that infallible sign of a savage state, the habit of tattooing and staining the body. 2. Though the Phoenicians perhaps visited the southern coast of the island at an early period, yet the first important inter- course between the primitive Britons and any foreign nation was the invasion of the country by the Romans under Julius Caesar in the year 55 B. C. The resistance of the Britons, though obstinate and ferocious, was gradually overpowered in the first century of the Christian era by the superior skill and military or- ganization of the Roman armies : the country became a Roman province ; and this domination, though extending only to the cen- tral and southern portion of the country, subsisted about four hundred years ; during which time the invaders, as was their cus- tom, endeavored to introduce among their barbarous subjects their laws, their habits, and their civilization. Such of the Celts as submitted to the yoke of their invaders acquired a considerable degree of civilization, learned the Latin language, and became a Latinized or provincial race, similar to the inhabitants on the other side of the Channel. The other portion of the Celts, who 10 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. I. inhabited mountainous regions inaccessible to the Roman arms, periodically descending from the rugged fastnesses in Wales and Scotland, carried devastation over the more civilized provirice, and taxed the skill and vigilance of the foreign soldiery. Upon the withdrawal of the Roman troops, at the beginning of the fifth century, the Romanized portion of the population, having in all probability lost, during their long subjection, their pris- tine valor, found themselves exposed to the furious incursions of hungry barbarians, eager to reconquer what they considered as their birthright. Swarms of Scottish and Pictish savages rushed down from their mountains; every trace of civilization was swept away; the , furious devastation which they carried through the land is commemorated in the ancient songs and legends of the Cymry; and the objects of their vengeance, after vainly imploring the r.ssi-stance of Rome in a most piteous ap- peal, had recourse to the only resource now left them, of hiring some wa^Jik.e rao : e,of foreign adventurers to protect them. These adventurers weiVthe Saxon pirates. 3. The traces left by the Celtic period in the language of the country are very few. It must be remembered that the Celtic dialect, whether in the form still spoken in Wales, or in that employed in the Highlands of Scotland and among the Celtic population of Ireland, has only a very remote affinity to modern English. In a vocabulary consisting of about forty thousand words^ it would be difficult to point out a hundred derived direct- ly from the Celtic. It is true that the English language contains a considerable number of words ultimately traceable to Celtic roots, but these have been introduced into it through the medium of the French, which, together with an enormous majority of Latin words, contains some of Gaulish origin. One class of words, however, is traceable to the Brito-Roman period of our history; and this is inefiaceably stamped upon the geography of the British Isles. Even in those parts of the country which have been successively occupied by very different races, many appellations of pure Celtic antiquity have survived the inunda- tions of new peoples, and may still be marked, like some ven- erable Druidical cromlech, standing in hoar mysterious ut;e in the midst of a more recent civilization. Thus the termination ''don" is, in some instances, as in "LondW," the Celtic word "dun" a rock or natural fortress. Again, the termination "caster," or " Chester" is, unquestionably, a monument of the A. D. 597-681. THE TEUTONIC RACE.- 11 Roman occupation of the island, indicating the spot of a Roman " castrum " or fortified post.* 4. The true foundations of the English laws, language, and national character were laid, between the middle of the fifth and the middle of the sixth centuries, deep in the solid granite of Teutonic antiquity. The piratical adventurers whom the old German passion for plunder and glory, and also, perhaps, the entreaties of the "miserable Britons," allured across the North Sea from the bleak shores of their native Jutland, Schleswig, Holstein, and the coasts of the Baltic, gradually established themselves in those parts of Britain which the Romans had oc- cupied before them. But the same causes which prevented the Romans from penetrating into the mountainous districts of Wales and Scotland, continued to exclude the Saxons also from those inaccessible fastnesses. The level, and consequently more easily accessible, portion of Scotland was gradually peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race; and their language and institutions were established there as completely as in South Britain itself. As to the half-Romanized Britons, one fact is certain, that in gen- eral, whether friendly or hostile, as possessing a less powerful organization and a less vigorous moral constitution than the Teuton, they were in the course of time either quietly absorbed into the more energetic race, or gradually disappeared. 5. The true parentage, therefore, of the English nation, is to be traced to the Teutonic race. The language spoken by the Northern invaders was a Low-Germanic dialect, akin to the modern Dutch ; and, like the people who spoke it, was possessed of a character at once practical and imaginative, at once real and ideal. In the modern English, the emotions and the ideas that bring man into relation with the great objects of nature still find expression to a great extent in Teutonic words. The con- version of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity (597-681) exposed their language to the modifying influences of the corrupt but more civilized Latin literature of the Lower Empire ; and soon a very varied and extensive literature arose, of which an account will presently be given. f 6. For a long period the English colonization of Britain was carried on by detached Teutonic tribes, who, after ages of dim * In the same way some other Latin words appear in other names of places : as strata, " paved roads," in Strat-ford, Stret-ton ; colonia, ill Lin-coin ; port-its, iu Portsmouth, . t See Chapter II. 12 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CH^P. I. struggle, finally grouped themselves into several independent kingdoms, generally denominated the Heptarchy, or Seven King- doms ; which were at last absorbed by Wessex, 827. But hardly was this accomplished when there occurred the third great inva- sion and change of sovereignty to which the country was des- tined, that of the barbarous and pagan Danes, who endeavored to treat the Saxons as the Saxons had treated the Celts. But, by the heroism and wisdom of the illustrious Alfred, this catas- trophe was averted ; the two fierce races, nearly allied in origin and blood, consented to an amalgamation which did not produce any very material change in the language or institutions of the country. In the North and East of England, however, as in some of the maritime regions of Scotland, where colonies of Danes established themselves, there still survive, in the idiom of the peasantry and the names of families and places, evident marks of a Scandinavian instead of an Anglo-Saxon population. As examples of this we may cite the now immortal name of Have- lock, derived from a famous sea-king, who is said to have founded the ancient town of Grimsby, so called after Grim in the story. But still the pure English element predominates, alike in the language and in the population. 7. Even before the Norman Conquest, many classical words had found their way into our language. The cultivation of the Latin literature in the monasteries, and the employment of the Latin language in the services of the Church, had incorporated with the Saxon tongue a considerable number of Latin words. Alfred, we know, translated into English the "Consolations" of BoCthius ; the Venerable Bede, and other Saxon ecclesiastics, composed chronicles and legends in Latin, so that a considerable influx of Latin words may have become perceptible in it before the appearance of Normans on our shores. Besides, the family connection between the last Anglo-Saxon dynasty and the neigh- boring dukes of Normandy must have tended to increa'se mate- rially the number of foreign words. 8. The most important change consequent upon the subjuga- tion of the country by the Normans was obviously the establish- ment in England of the great feudal principle of the military tenure of land, of the chivalric spirit and habits which were the natural result of feudal institutions, and lastly, of the broad de- marcation which separated society into the two great classes of the Nobles and the Serfs. But it is with the effects of the Nor- A. I). 827-1066. THE DANES AND NORMANS. 13 man Conquest upon the language of the country that we are at present concerned. On their arrival in France, the Northmen had exchanged for their native Scandinavian language a dialect of that.great Romance * speech which extended during the Mid- dle Ages from the Northern shore of the Mediterranean to the British Channel, and which may be defined as the decomposi- tion of the classical Latin. It was soon divided into two great sister-idioms, the Langue-d'Oc and the Langue-d'Oil (so called from the different words for _y/ !*<./ ice, .Act J Su. ;]. A. D. 680-973. OLD ENGLISH POETRY. 15 CHAPTER II. ENGLISH LITERATURE TO THE NORMAN CONOJJEST. 13. No spojcen language of modern Europe has so ancient a- literature as the English. For it is in the tongue which we now speak that the thoughts, sentiments, and feelings of the English people have found expression for more than fourteen centuries. Before a single Englishman had set foot on British soil, while Roman and Celt still grappled in desperate strife, or dwelt peace- fully together as conqueror and subject, our native tongue, rug- ged and meagre as it must have been, was employed to express the simple wants and simple conceptions of the English race. There was, strange as it may appear, an English literature be- fore there was an England. 14. Differing in many particulars, the rude dialect that our forefathers brought with them to Britain is the same in all essen- tial respects as our present language. It has undergone many changes and modifications, has been affected by external and internal influences, has stripped itself of the great mass of its inflections, and, on the other hand, acquired an immense ampli- tude of expression by the unhesitating adoption of new words from all manner of sources in fact, has passed from early youth to mature manhood; but in all the features that consti- tute identity it is the same. 15. Before proceeding any farther, therefore, it were well for us to get rid of the erroneous notion, that our present speech is not the speech of our fathers, as well as of the unscientific clas- sification of the various stages through which this speech has passed. For the first is false in fact; and the second, by substi- tuting the terms Anglo-Saxon and Semi- Saxon for the plain word English that Alfred used,* perpetuates the misconception. In the language of Sir F. Palgrave,f the use of these expressions * -iElfred Kyning wses wealhstod Slsse bee, and hie of boclrcdene on Enrjlisc wende. " vEl- fred King was commentator qf this book, and it from book-language into English turned." f " Normandy and .England," iii. 596. 16 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. II. conveys " a most false idea of our civil history. It disguises the continuity of affairs, and substitutes the appearance of a new formation in the place of a progressive evolution." And it is so with our native tongue as well. It has grown to be \vhat it is, obeying the spontaneous impulse from within ; not entire ly uninfluenced by the Norman conquest, and other events, but still steadily advancing in spite of them on its own predestined way, according to the law of its own nature. 16. Keeping these facts before us, then, and remembering that all classifications of the kind must be to a great extent arbitrary, we are justified in arranging these successive developments in the following way : 1. Old English, from the earliest period to 1154. During this period English was highly inflected in its grammar, and mainly homogeneous in its vocabulary. 2. Middle English, from 1154 to about 1500. This is the transi- tion period, during which the grammar was rapidly relieving itself of its complicated forms, and the vocabulary was freely taking in words from every quarter, principally from the French. 3. Modern English, from about 1500 to the present time. Grammar and vocabulary, though still undergoing slight modi- fications, are now practically fixed. These periods will correspond respectively to the boyhood, youth, and manhood of the English language. 17. When then did our literature begin? Clearly with the first authentic utterance of the English race in the English tongue ; and the first now extant is the poem of Beowulf. i. OLD ENGLISH (commonly called ANGLO-SAXON) POETRY. 18. The poem called BEOWULF seems to have originated in the primitive seat of the Angles, at Schleswig, and to have been brought over to England about the end of the fifth century. Its spirit is that of the old heathen Germans. Its subject is the expedition of Prince Beowulf, a lineal descendant of Woden, on the adventure of delivering a king from a destructive monster, called the Grendel, which enters the royal hall at midnight, and destroys many of the warriors who are sleeping there. The poem is supposed to be allegorical, this monster representing the poisonous exhalation from a neighboring marsh ; ami it illustrates the early predilection of our ancestors for that kixid A. D. 680-937. OLD ENGLISH POETRY. 17 of composition. The style is very similar to that of the old Scandinavian sagas ; and the hero is connected with the races that appear in the Lay of the Nibelung. 19. The BATTLE OF FINNESBURH "a small fragment, in which we meet Hengist, the mythical warrior" and the TRAV- ELLER'S SONG are also assigned to the same period. The latter records the wanderings of a certain gleeman, the contemporary of Eormanric (Hermanaric), and vEtla (Attila). 20. But C^EDMON " was the first Englishman it may be the first individual of Gothic race who exchanged the gorgeous images of the old mythology for the chaste beauties of Christian poetry.* According to Bede, he was a monk of Whitby, and he died about the year 680. His Metrical Paraphrase of the Scrip- tures (Spec. Eng. Lit. 1, page 17) produced an extraordinary in- fluence upon our national modes of thought and expression, and won for him the deep reverence of five centuries of Englishmen. The manuscript of his works first found its way into the hands of Junius in 1654, and by him was published in 1665. Indeed it has been maintained by some, that it was this work that first sug- gested to MiltQn the subject of his renowned Epic, whom they also assert to be under distinct literary obligations to the elder poet. Undoubtedly Milton commenced the composition of Para- dise Lost not many years after the discovery of Csedmon ; and in one passage at least Satan's soliloquy in Hell he bears a striking resemblance to the old Anglian. His subject also, to a great extent, carries him over the same ground. Cjedmon, like Milton, describes the revolt of the wicked angels, their expulsion from heaven and descent into hell, together with the creation of the world, and other kindred events. 21. Next in order, both of time and merit, comes the BRUNAN- BURH WAR SONG, which in massive, ponderous verse, highly characteristic of the race, describes the great battle of that name (937), when "yEthelstan king, of earls the lord, and Eadmund sethling " rolled back into utter rout the combined powers of Scot, Cymry, and Northman under their leader Anlaf, the Dane. This great national song of victory is preserved in almost everv copy of the Saxon Chronicle, where onlyit is found ; and it has kindled the enthusiasm of modern editors to an unwonted pitch. It is indeed a noble piece of verse, honorable to the race that * Guest's " English Rhythms," ii. 23. 2 18 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. II. produced it, giving utterance to the deep-toned exultation of the English people at their great deliverance, in the most powerful and glowing language. 22. It is to the same source the Saxon Chronicle that we owe many other magnificent outbursts of old English verse. The ANNEXATION OF MERCIA (942) ; the CORONATION OF EDGAR at Bath (973), as well as the Brunanburh War Song, are believed to have been popular songs which the compiler for the time being inserted in his copy of the Chronicle. There are other poems in the same work, however, which were evidently composed for the places in which they are found. On certain occasions, such as the death of Edgar, the murder of Edward the Martyr, the death of Edward the Confessor, it would seem that the Chronicler found mere prose inadequate to the expression of his feelings, and was accordingly obliged to break out into verse. 23. But the BATTLE OF MALDON is a separate composition. It celebrates the valorous deeds and heroic death of the brave Eal- dorman Brihtnoth, who with all his faithful gesiths, fell in des- perate fight with the Pagan Northmen at Maldon in 991. This striking episode in the disastrous reign of the imbecile Ethelred appears to have deeply affected the national heart, and the result is one of the most spirit-stirring bursts of song ever written. The battle is described circumstantially; the warlike exploits of the several combatants, whose names are duly given, are mi- nutely detailed in true Homeric fashion. No composition of the time possesses greater interest, not only for its rare poetic merits, but for the light it reflects upon the military principles, tactics, and usages of Englishmen before the conquest. 24. These works, with the fragmentary JUDITH, King Alfred's Paraphrase of the Metres of Botithius (Spec. Eng. Lit. #), and a few other scraps of verse which are found scattered through various prose compositions, may be said to constitute almost all the poetical treasures of our nation before the Conquest. They are all written upon the same metrical principle, allitera- tion. Though appearing generally at long intervals, and rarely extending to any very great length, they are exceedingly valua- ble revealing, as they do, the mental constitution of our an- cestors, and showing that Englishmen were built pretty much on the same model then as now. They are the sincere utterances of a grave people, with an immense fund of radical lire deep- beated within them not accustomed to give vert to their feel- A. D. 849-901. OLD ENGLISH PROSE. 19 ings save upon great occasions, and then expressing them with somewhat of solemnity, even in the midst of their excitement. The bright sparkle of lyric verse we cannot expect from them neither the language nor the national character was adapted to its production and, indeed, we can yet boast of but few bril- liant pieces in that department of poetry. 2. OLD ENGLISH (commonly called ANGLO-SAXON) PROSE. 25. First in this province comes the honored name of ALFRED (849-901). No sooner had the great King effected the deliver- ance of his people from their Danish enemies, than he eagerly set to work to lift them up from the ignorance and degradation into which they had sunk. Thinking that he would materially assist his purpose by translating into the vernacular such stan- dard works upon religion, morals, geography, and history as were then current, he not only invited to his court men of learning and ability from whatever quarter he could find them, but pro- ceeded by a careful course of training irksome enough, we may be sure, at his time of life to fit himself for the task. By these means he succeeded, to a great extent, in accomplishing the de- sire of his heart ; and among Royal authors Alfred still stands preeminent. His most important translations were those of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the Ancient History of Orosius, BoVthius de Consolatione Philosophic ; to which last he added, by way of preface, the Pastorale of St. Gregory. (Spec. Eng. Lit. &,*) To the second he prefixed an original geographical de- scription of Germania, which he prepared himself with great care; and for which a considerable portion of the materials was supplied to the king by Ohthere and Wulfstan, both adventurous navigators, the first a native of Helgoland, in Norway. 26. Alfred was something more than a mere translator. Not only does he deal pretty freely with the text of his author con- densing some passages and expanding others cutting away redundancies and making additions as he thinks fit; but the elaborate prefaces, and the new matter introduced by way of comment, illustration, or explanation, entitle him to be called an original author. He was mainly assisted in his preliminary course of training, and in the work itself, by ASSER, then a monk of St. David's, but afterwards Bishop of Sherborne, to whom we are greatly indebted for our knowledge of the life and character of the noble king. (See p. 21.) 20 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. II. 27. Many works also were translated by the king's order, or after his example, as the Dialogties of St. Gregory, by WERE- FRITH, Bishop of Worcester, a number of which have, by the usual practice, been fathered on the king himself, 'without hav- ing any claim whatever to such a distinction. 28. The principal representatives of the purely religious ele- ment in the literature of the time are ^LFRIC, Archbishop of Canterbury, surnamed Grammaticus(&. 1006) , WULFSTAN, Arch- bishop of York (d. 1023), and ^ELFRIC BATA, also Archbishop of York (d. 1051), who was a devoted disciple of his elder name- sake. The first is distinguished as the author of eighty hom- ilies his chief work, of the translation of the Books of Moses, and by his attempts to revrve the study of Latin among his countrymen, with which view he wrote a Latin Grammar and Colloquium. The two others also enjoy some distinction, the first as a writer of homilies, the second as having republished the grammar and colloquium of his master, and written a life of Bishop Ethelwold (925-984). 29. One great monument of prose literature still remains the SAXON CHRONICLE. This work exists in no less than seven separate forms, each named after the monastery in which it was compiled of which, however, the Winchester and Peterbo- rough Chronicles are the most valuable. The ordinary account given of the origin of this work is, that it was first composed, at the solicitation of King Alfred, by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, who brought it down to the year 891, whence it was continued as a contemporary record, to the accession of Henry II. in 1154. But there is absolutely no evidence of this. Cer- tain features of the earliest copy, the Winchester, indicate a chronicle that was composed in Alfred's reign, but there is noth- ing whatever to connect it with either Alfred or Plegmund. This chronicle the earliest form of which begins with the arrival of Julius Caesar in Britain, and the latest ends with the year 1154, is remarkable as the first ever written in Teutonic prose, and as furnishing us with almost our only trustworthy materials for the early history of the English people. The later entries are also the latest specimens of old English. 80. The conte/nptuous judgment that is sometimes pronounced on this work is altogether unjust. The earlier portions are cer* tainly meagre in their details, and altogether devoid of the quali- ties we expect to find in an elaborate historical narrative ; but A. D. 672-893. EARLY LATIN WRITERS. 21 in the later the chroniclers, whoever they may be, occasionally rise into sustained descriptions, characterized by vigor of style, and a grave, sober eloquence. One of the best passages is to be found in the Peterborough copy under the year 1087, m which the character of the great Conqueror is drawn with extraordinary fidelity and force. Mr. Earle is of opinion, that "putting aside the Hebrew annals, there is not anywhere known a series of early vernacular history comparable to the Saxon Chronicles." Excepting the Romance of Apollonius of Tyre (which story is the same as that of Shakspeare's Pericles), and a translation of the Gospels into the vernacular, there is hardly anything of interest remaining. The various laws and charters emanating from our early kings and princes, and written, for the most part, in the native language, do not properly fall under the head of lit- erature. We shall now take a passing glance at our principal writers in Latin. 3. LATIN WRITERS BEF/DRE THE CONQUEST. 31. Of these by far the greatest is BEDE, or Boeda, surnamed the Venerable (672-735), who, born at Monk Wearmouth, spent the greater part of his life at the monastery of Jarrow-upon-the- Tyne. His Ecclesiastical History of the English was for many centuries the only source of knowledge to the nation regarding its early history. Written for the purpose of preserving among the Angles and Saxons the memory of their conversion to the Christian faith, this work embraces large sections of their politi- cal history as well, more especially the rise and growth of the various petty Teutonic states throughout the island. In careful research, in arrangement of materials, in scrupulous fidelity and felicity of style he rises far above all the Gothic historians of his time. His other compositions, theological, scientific, and gram- matical, though immensely voluminous, and not altogether with- out merit, do not concern us here. o2. ASSER, Bishop of Sherborne (d. 910), the friend and asso- ciate of Alfred, is the supposed author of an extant biography of his master. This is a work of great interest, but its authen- ticity has been fiercely disputed. Though the question is sur- rounded with difficulties, the balance of probability would seem to be in favor of the substantial truth of what the book itself sets forth, that it was written in 893. At any rate, the majority 22 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. II. of competent judges are fully satisfied that it is the genuine work of the learned bishop. King Alfred was not the only writer of the royal stock of Cerdic. What Mr. Earle calls " the first com- prehensive Latin work founded upon the Saxon Chronicle," was written in the reign of Ethelred II. by ETHEL WEARD, who traced his descent from the last brother of Alfred, the heroic Ethelred. The work ends with the last year of Edgar (975) ; and though in the main a mere translation from the vernacular chronicles, is not without a kind of value, in spite of the author's ridiculous pedantry. He occasionally throws a feeble glimmer of light upon the dark passages of our early history. 33. There were many other distinguished Englishmen belong- ing to this period who wrote in Latin, WILFRED of York, (d. 709), afterwards canonized ; EGBERT (678-766) ; ALCUIN (725- 804), so well known in the history of Charlemagne; but their works either have been lost, or possess but little interest for mod- ern readers, being composed for the most part of dry theologi- cal treatises, or wearisome verses. A. D. 1200. LAYAMON. CHAPTER III. FROM THE CONQUEST TO GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 34. FOR more than a century after the Norman Conquest Eng- lish literature may be said to have ceased altogether.* This event, so fatal to the native aristocracy, seemed at first to have swept away in common ruin the laws, language, and arts of the English people, and to have blotted out England from the roll- call of the nations. A foreign King and aristocracy, an alien language and literature, ruled in the land ; the old speech was no longer heard in the halls of the great, and lived only on the lips of the people; native genius no longer strove to utter itself in the native tongue, and the voice of the English nation seemed stilled for ever. But it was not the stillness of death ; in a few generations signs of returning life began to show themselves ; and the English nation emerged from the fiery trial, with its full equipment of language, laws, and literature materially altered indeed, and perhaps improved but still bearing the ineffacea- ble Teutonic stamp. The national life was not annihilated at Senlac; it was but suspended for a time. 35. The specific effect of the Conquest upon our native tongue has been referred to already, and need only be briefly spoken of here. Tendencies had set in common to the English with other languages of the same stock consisting mainly in an apparent desire on the part of our language to shake off the complicated net-work of inflections that seemed to fetter its free utterance. These tendencies existed before the Norman Conquest; would have worked their way to the due result in spite of it; and the great political revolution did but give them an additional im- pulse. Nor w r as even this last a direct consequence. The ver- nacular speech was driven from literature altogether for a time, and obliged to take refuge in the cottages of the people ; where, no longer fixed by the old steadying forces for it is always the * The Saxon Chronicle, confined to the Abbey of Peterborough, and accessible only to a few mouks, can hardly be culled literature. 24 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. III. effect of a literature to give permanence to the forms of a lan- guage and exposed to many varying influences, it fell into utter dislocation. The process of enfranchisement was thereby accelerated ; and when, at the beginning of the twelfth century, this speech rose to the surface once more, it had travelled much farther on its prescribed course, than it would have done had it been left to itself. Still it was the old tongue. In the words of Max Muller, "not a single drop of foreign blood has entered into the organic system of the English language. The Grammar, the blood and the soul of the language, is as pure and unmixed in English as spoken in the British Isles, as it was when spoken on the shores of the German Ocean by the Angles, Saxons, and Juts of the continent." * 36. This the Middle English Stage m ay be called the rev- olutionary period of the language, during which it was a state of apparently hopeless disorganization. There was a general break-up of the old grammatical system ; and uncertainty, con- fusion, and fluctuation prevailed everywhere. Three dialects the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern, each with certain peculiar inflectional forms, and each represented by literary works of some note now struggled for the mastery. The influx of French words too, though trifling at first, had already begun ; and for the next three centuries the process went on with increasing rapidity, until the vocabulary became to a great degree Romance. Still there was a general movement towards simplification and new stability; each century brought with it a closer approximation to modern English ; and the lan- guage was clearly gravitating towards a new fixed condition, in which " the fulness and purity of the ancient inflections" would no longer be found. 37. The interest of the writings which will form the subject of this chapter is almost exclusively philological and historical. Their literary merits are but small ; but they supply us with the means of tracing the course of the language through its many varying forms ; and not a few of them occasionally throw a powerful light on the feelings and aspirations, the political and social condition of the people. 38. If we except a few fragments of verse the Hymn of St. Godric, the Ely Song of King Canute, The Here Prophecy, none * " Lectures on the Science of Language," 1st scries, p. 40 A. D. 1200. LAYAMON. ORM1N. 25 of them exceeding eight lines in length the first to break the long silence was LAYAMON, author of the Bmt, or Chronicle of Britain (A.D. 1200). (^ ) According to his own account he was a priest of Ernley-by-Severn (svipposed to be Lower Areley) ; and his dialect will, therefore, represent that of North Worces- tershire. His work is mainly a translation from the Brut cFAn- glcterre, written in the French language by Robert Wace, a canon of Bayeux in the time of Henry II. ; but Layamon has introduced into his work so much other matter that it extends to thirty-two thousand two hundred and fifty lines, or more than double the length of the original Brut. Allusions to events that occurred late in the twelfth century enable us to fix the date ap- proximately. The style of the work which has come down to us in two texts, an earlier and a later bears witness to Nor- maii influence, both in the structure of the verse and the manner of the narrative, but not nearly to so great an extent as might have been expected from the translator of a French original. The earlier text has not fifty words taken from the French ; and both texts only about ninety. Though it still retains a large proportion of the old intlectional fprms, a broad chasm sepa- rates it from the language of Alfred; and though composed on the old metrical system, alliteration, it contains a considerable number of rhyming couplets as well. "To the historical stu- dent," says Sir F. Madden, 4i the work is important, as the last and fullest form of the old Celtic traditions concerning early British history." 89. The AXCREN RIWLE, or Rule of Female Anchorites a code of monastic precepts, written for the guidance of a small nunnery is the work of an unknown author, who must have lived in the early part of the thirteenth century. It possesses no literary value whatsoever, but is of great importance philo- logically. Though the quantity of matter is but half that of Layamon, it contains twice as many French words; which cir- cumstance is perhaps owing to the fact that it treats of religious .subjects, and was thereby obliged to take in many words of Latin derivation. 40. ORMIN, or ORM, author of the Ormulum* (*) so called " because that Orni it wrought," was a monk of the order of St. Augustine, and is supposed to have lived in the east of England Borne time in the thirteenth century. His work is described by its editor, Dr. White, (i as a series of Homilies in an imperfect 26 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. III. state, composed in metre without alliteration, and, except in a very-few cases, without rhyme ; the subject of the Homilies being supplied by those portions of the New Testament which were read in the daily services of the Church." There is a great di- versity of opinion among critics as to the exact time of its com- position, some making it contemporary with Layamon, others finding in its form and grammatical structure evidence of a later date. And they are equally at variance with one another as i.) the place. By some scholars it is looked upon as a specimen of a North-eastern patois; but Dr. Guest considers it " the oldest, the purest, and by far the most valuable specimen of our old English dialect that time has left us." If written, as generally supposed, in the north-east, it tends to prove that the Anglian dialect was the first to throw off the old inflections. Its peculiar spelling, which consists in the doubling of the terminal conso- nant of a syllable when it has the short sound, to which device the author attached great importance, throws some interesting light on the history of the language. But few Latin words, and scarcely a trace of French, are to be found in the Ormulum. 41. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, who nourished about the year 1300, wrote a metrical Chronicle of England, of some importance to the history of both our language and nation. (# ) This work extends from the time of Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain, to the end of the reign of Henry III. ; and from events it refers to, must have been composed about 1297. In the earlier part it closely follows Geoffrey of Monmouth ; but in the latter, it con- tributes, from more trustworthy sources, some valuable infor'ma- tion upon the physical and social condition of England in the thirteenth century. It is written in rhyming lines of fourteen syllables. To the same author a collection of the Lives of the English Saints is with confidence attributed ; and short works on the Martyrdom of Thomas & Becket, and the Life of Saint Brandan are undoubtedly his. 42. The last conspicuous production in English before Chaucer was a similar composition from the pen of ROBERT MAX^YMG, or Robert of BRUNNE, who was born at Brunne (Bourne), in Lincolnshire, in the latter half of the same century. ( 1O ) His work consists of two parts, which are both taken from the French ; the first, coming down to the death of Cadvvalader, from Wace's Brut; the second, ending with the death of Edward I., from the French of Peter of Langtoft The second, which has been con- A. 1). 1333-1352. LAWRENCE MINOT. 27 siderably enlarged and improved, is, like its original, in the Alexandrine twelve-syllable verse ; whereas the first retains the octo-sjllabic metre of Wace. The language is in a much more advanced state than that of Robert of Gloucester; the grammar having drawn a step nearer to modern English, and the vocab- ulary having received a considerable accession of Romano, words. 43. A very curious composition of the first half of the four- teenth century is the Ayenbite of luivit, or Again-biting i. e., Remorse of Conscience. It is a consistent attempt, made by DAN MICHEL OF NORTHGATE, in Kent, to write a work wholly in native Teutonic words. The title itself illustrates his inge- nuity in word-building; but a more amusing specimen is the word " ontodelinde " "that which cannot be divided into parts " for individual. 44. But the immediate predecessor of Chaucer is LAWRENCE MINOT, whose ten poems on the battles and victories of Edward III. were most likely written at various times between the years 1333 and 1352. The series begins with Halidon Hill (1333). (Bannockburn being introduced for the purpose of showing how it had been avenged), and ends with the taking of Guisnes (1352). These poems were the first successful attempt to com- bine alliteration not only with rhyme but with Romance measures, both of verse and stanza. They are not without precision and force of expression ; and breathe a strong martial, and patriotic spirit, characteristic of the reign of Edward III. 45. This is the age of the METRICAL ROMANCE. For a long time after the conquest French was the only language of popular literature, and was used even by English writers in this kind of -composition. It is probable that all our early English metrical romances were translations from the French ; and their favorite metre is the octo-syllabic, found in the Roman de la Rose and Brut of Wace. The most considerable of thenr are the Romance of Alexander ; Tristrem ; Richard Cceur-de-Lton ; Ifiomydon ; William and the Werewolf; the Geste of King Horn ; and Haz'dok the Dane. The last of these, which relates the story of the foundation of Grimsby by Havelok's preserver, Grim, is especially noteworthy. 40. The free patriotic spirit of the people found an utterance for itself during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in PO- LITICAL SONGS, many of which are written in English. By far 28 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. III. the most spirited is that which is oldest in subject if not in date, the Song against the King of Almaigne, the composition of some fervent admirer of Sir Simon the Righteous, who therein expresses his hearty satisfaction at the great victory of Lewes, and his deep contempt for the poor figure cut in it by Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans. 47. Of the BALLADS and poems of genuine native origin many of them satirical the most remarkable are the Ozvl and the Nightingale ; the Land of Cockayne ; the Body and the Soul ; all of which were produced in the fourteenth century, or not long after. 48. These works, however, were not all composed in the same dialect. Ralph Higden, writing about the year 1350, tells us that in his time the native speech was split up into three forms, the Northern, the Midland, and the Southern, distinguished from one another by well-marked peculiarities ; and an examination of the writings described above fully bears out his statement. The Northern, spoken as far south as the Humber, with the Pennine chain as its western limit, formed all the persons of the present indicative, singular and plural alike, in e$, and is rep- resented by Minot's poems : the Midland, extending from the Ilumber to the Thames, and taking in the counties east of the Pennine chain, but excluding Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and parts of Herefordshire and Worcestershire, formed its pres- ent indicative plural in en, and is represented by the Ormultim ; and the southern, comprehending all the rest of England, with the same parts of the verb in eth, is represented by Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, and Dan Michel of Northgate. Traces of the differences, at least between the second and third, can be dis- covered even in Chaucer; but it was the Midland that in the main became ultimately the language of England. 49. Writings in English are far from representing the entire intellectual wealth of the nation during this time; indeed they form but an insignificant portion of it. For almost three centu- ries after the conquest French continued to be the language of polite literature, and Latin of theology, philosophy, science, and history ; and this country produced many men of great eminence in all these provinces. Strictly speaking, these have no claim to a place among the great names of English literature; but their works exercised so important and so lasting an influence on its form, tone, and subject-matter that they cannot be altogether passed over. A. D. 1089-1347. TEE FRENCH ROMANCES. 29 50. French Romances, composed principally in verse, either by professional minstrels, or by knights and even kings, were then the favorite reading of the cultivated classes ; but the great mass of them can hardly be called ours at all, having been imported into this country from the Continent. They had a tendency to gather in clusters round some great name; and of these groups the most famous were those that had Charlemagne and Alexan- der as central figures. Still one cycle, the Arthurian, is of gen- uine native growth ; and this one happens to possess the highest interest of them all at least to the present generation of read- ers. Its origin, about which so much has been written, and so little is known, cannot be discussed here ; but the names of three Englishmen, LUKE GALT, WALTER MAPES, the jovial Arch- deacon of Oxford, and ROBERT BORRON, are the earliest men" tioned in connection with it. The first is said to have translated the Tristrem from Latin into Romance ; to the second is attrib- uted the composition, in Latin, of the Birth and Life of Arthur, the Lancelot, the Saint Graal, and the Death of Arthur ; and to the last a translation of the second and third of Mapes's pro- ductions is assigned. These all seem to have been in prose. Henry II. is believed to have suggested to Mapes the last part of his work; and to have imposed by express command his task upon Borron. Copies of some of these tales are found in Welsh ; but to which of the two nations, W T elsh or English, the original property belonged, still remains an unsolved question. Besides these romances the Anglo-Norman possessed great store of Metrical Chronicles, Satires, Fabliaux, many of which Chaucer afterwards used as materials. 51. The principal writers in Latin were LANFRANC (d.' 1089), and ST. ANSELM (1033-1109), in theology; John of Salisbury (d. 1180), ALEXANDER HALES, " the Irrefragable Doctor " (d. 1245), DUNS SCOTUS, "the Subtle Doctor" (d. 1308), and WILLIAM OF OCCAM, "the Invincible Doctor" (d. 1347), -in philosophy; and ROGER BACON, author of the Opus Ma jus- (d. 1292), in science. The chief historical writers were Church- men, and, with a few exceptions, they confined themselves to the history of England. For the time before the Conquest FLORENCE OF WORCESTER (d. 1118), WILLIAM OP MALMESBURY (1140), HENRY OF HUNTINGDON (d. after 1154), are our principal authorities ; WILLIAM OF POITIERS, and ORDERICUS VITALIS, for the events of the Conqviest itself; and MATTHEW PARIS and ROGER OF WENDOVER, for subsequent times. 30 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. III. 52. English literature has now reached the eve of its first great expansion. It has been in existence for a thousand years, but has as yet produced no work of pre-eminent merit, no name that is entitled to rank among intellects of the highest order. Force, energy of thought and expression, natural sweetness and simple pathos, are not wanting; but there is still a complete absence of artistic form, literary skill, and the higher qualities of true work- manship. Nothing would appear to portend the magnificent outburst that is at hand ; but the student of history can discern forces, political, social, and spiritual, at work beneath the smooth surface, destined within a few years to produce mo- mentous results in all three departments. The national life and thought of England is now passing through a mighty quickening process ; a brilliant page in her history is about to open, in which will appear many bright names, but none brighter than that of the first man who, under these new con- ditions, spoke to the hearts of all classes of the English people GEOFFREY CHAUCER. A. D. 1300. CHAUCER. 31 CHAPTER IV. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 53. THE fourteenth century is the most important epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. It is the point of contact be- tween two widely-differing eras in the social, religious, and political annals of our race; the slack water between the ebb of Feudalism and Chivalry, and the "young flood" of the Revival of Letters and the great Protestant Reformation. Of this great transformation from the old order to the new, the personal career, no less than the works, of the first great English poet, CHAUCER, will furnish us with the most exact type and expres- sion ; for, like all men of the highest order of genius, he at once followed and directed the intellectual tendencies of his age, and is himself the " abstract and brief chronicle" of the spirit of his time. And in the age in which he lived he was eminently hap- py ; the magnificent court of Edward III. had carried the splendor of chivalry to the height of its development; the victories of Sluys, of Crecy, and Poitiers, by exciting the national pride, tended to consummate the fusion into one vigorous nationality of the two elements which formed the English people and the English language. The literature, too, abundant in quantity, if not remarkable for much originality of form, was rapidly tak- ing a purely English tone; the rhyming chronicles and legen- dary romances were either translated into, or originally composed in, the vernacular language. 54. In endeavoring to form an idea of the intellectual situa- tion of England in the fourteenth century, we must by no means leave out of account the vast influence exerted by the preaching of Wiclif, and the mortal blow struck by him against the foun- dations of Catholic supremacy in England. This, together with the general hostility excited by the intolerable corruptions of the monastic orders, which had gradually invaded the rights, the functions, and the possessions, of the far more practically-useful working or parochial clergy, still farther intensified that inquir- 32 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. ing spirit which prompted the people to refuse obedience to the temporal as well as spiritual authority of the Roman See, and paved the way for an ultimate rejection of the Papal yoke. 55. The date of Chaucer's birth is uncertain. By some it is fixed at 1328, by others at 1340, which latter date would harmo- nize better with certain known facts in his life. If, however, the first be correct, the poet's career almost coincides, in its com- mencement, with the splendid administration of Edward III., and comprehends also the short and disastrous reign of Richard II., which he survived for about a year. He is supposed to have been sprung of wealthy, though not illustrious parentage, and must have been of gentle blood; his surname, which is the French Chaussicr, evidently pointing at a continental at that period equivalent, in a certain degree, to an aristocratic origin. Besides this, we have distinct proof, not only in the fact of his having.been " armed a knight," but also in the honorable posts which he held, that he must have belonged to the higher sphere of society. His marriage too (which took place about 1360) with Philippa Roet, one of the maids of honor in attendance upon Queen Philippa, and the younger daughter of Sir Payne Roet, a knight who came from Hainault in the queen's train, would still further tend to confirm this supposition. 56. Chaucer speaks of London as his birthplace in the Testa- ment of Love. In his Court of Love he speaks of himself under the name and character of " Philogenet of Cambridge, Clerk ; " but this hardly proves that he was educated at Cambridge. Dur- ing the years 1356-9 he was in the service of Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of Lionel Duke of Clarence, probably as page. He was taken prisoner in 1359 by the French, at the siege of Rhetiers, and being ransomed, according to the custom of those times, was enabled to return to England in 1360. 57. He next appears, in 1367, as one of the " valets of the king's chamber," and writs are addressed to him under the then hon- orable designation, " dilectus valettus nostcr." His official career appears to have been active and even distinguished : he enjoyed, during a long period, various profitable offices, having been for twelve years comptroller of the customs and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of London ; and he seems also to have been occasionally employed in diplomatic negotiations. Thus, he was joined with two citizens of Genoa in a commission to Italy in 1373, on which occasion he is sup- A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 33 posed to have made the acquaintance of Petrarch, then the most illustrious man of letters in Europe. Partly in consequence of his marriage with Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Catherine Swynford, was first the mistress and afterwards the wife of John of Gaunt, and partly perhaps from sharing in some of the political and religious opinions of that powerful prince, Chaucer was identified, to a considerable degree, both with the household and party of the Duke of Lancaster; and his Complaynte of the Blacke Knyght, his Dream, and his Boke of the Ditc/iesse were suggested to him, the first by the courtship of the duke and the duchess Blanche, the second by their marriage, and the third by her death in 1369. One of the most interesting particulars of his life was his election as representative for Kent in the Par- liament of 1386, which was dissolved in December of the same year. During the next four years he sustained a series of dis- heartening reverses. He was dismissed from all his offices in 1386; lost his wife in the following year; and if there be any truth in the notion that the Testament of Love is an allegorical description of a chapter in the poet's own life, he was obliged to submit to the bitterest humiliations about the same time. 58. In 1389, however, he was appointed to the office of clerk of the king's works, which he held for only about two years; and there is reason to believe that, though his pecuniary cir- cumstances must have been, during a g^eat part of his life, in proportion to the position he occupied in the state and in society, his last days were more or less clouded by embarrassment. His death took place at Westminster on the 25th of October, 1400; and the house in which this event occurred was afterwards re- moved to make room for the chapel of Henry VII. 59. If we may judge from an ancient and probably authentic portrait of Chaucer, attributed to his contemporary and fellow- poet Occleve, as well as from a curious and beautiful miniature introduced, according to the fashion of those times, into one of the most valuable manuscript copies of his works, our great poet appears to have been a man of pleasing and acute, though some- what meditative and abstracted countenance, and to have grown somewhat corpulent towards the end of his life, at which time the Canterbury Tales were written. (13*} When, in the Pro- logue to The Rime of Sir Thopas, Chaucer is in his turn called upon by the host of the Tabard, himself represented as a " large man," and a ' faire burgess," to contribute his story to the 3 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. amusement of the pilgrims, he is rallied by honest Harry Bailey on his corpulency, as well as on- his studious and abstracted air : " What man art thou ? " quod he ; "Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare; For ever on the ground I se the stare. Approach nere, and lokc merrily. ISow ware you, sires, and let this man have space, lie in the wast is schapc as well as I: This were a popet in an arm to embrace, For any woimnan, srnal and fair of face. lie seineth elvisch by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he daliaunce." 60. The literary and intellectual career of Chaucer divides itself naturally into two periods, closely corresponding with the two great social and political tendencies which meet in the four- teenth century. His earlier productions bear the stamp and character of the Chivalric, his later and more original creations of the Renaissance literatiire. It is more than probable that the poet's visits to Italy, then the fountain and centre of the great literary revolution, brought him into contact with the works and the men by whose example the change in the taste of Europe was brought about. The religious element, too, enters largely into the character of his writings, though it is difficult to ascer- tain how far the poet sympathized with the bold doctrines of Wiclif, who, like himself, was favored and protected by John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. It is, however, probable, that though he sympathized as is shown by a thousand satirical passages in his poems with Wicklif's hostility to the monastic orders and abhorrence of the corruptions of the clergy and the haughty claims of papal supremacy, the poet did not share in the theological opinions of the reformer, then regarded as a dangerous heresiarch. He probably remained faithful to the creed of Catholicism, while attacking with irresistible satire the abuses of the Catholic ecclesiastical administration. 61. On a rough general inspection of the longer works which compose the rather voluminous collection of Chaucer's poetry, it will be found that about eight of them are to be ascribed to a direct or indirect imitation of purely Romance models, while three fall naturally under the category of the Italian or Renais- sance type. Of the former class the principal are the Romaunt of the Rose, the Court of Love, the Assembly of Fowls, the Cuckoo and the Nightingale, the Flower and the Leaf, Chaucer s Dream, A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 35 the Boke of the DucJtesse, and the House of Fame. Under the latter we must range the Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Crc&eide, Anclyda and Arcyte, and above all the Canterbury Tales. (13} 62. (i.) The Romaunt of the Rose is a translation of the fa- mous French allegory Le Roman de la Rose, which forms the ear- liest monument of French literature in the thirteenth century. The original is of inordinate length, containing, even in the un- finished state in which it was left, twenty-two thousand verses. It was begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who completed about five thousand lines ; and was continued after his death by the witty and sarcastic Jean de Meum : the former of which authors died in 1260., and the latter probably about 1318. According to the almost universal practice of the old Romance poets, the story is put into the form of a dream or vision. Lover, the hero, is alternately aided and obstructed in his undertakings : the prin- cipal of which is that of culling the enchanted rose which gives its name to the poem, by a multitude of beneficent or malignant personages, such as Bel-Accueil, Faux-Semblant, Danger, Male- Bouche, and Constrained-Abstinence. Chaucer's translation, which is in the octosyllabic Trouvere measure of the original, and consists of seven thousand six hundred and ninety-nine verses, comprehends the whole of the portion written by Lorris, together with about a sixth part of Meun's continuation ; the portions omitted having either never been translated by the Eng- lish poet in consequence of his dislike of the immoral and anti- religious tendency of which they were accused, or left out by the copyist from the early English manuscripts. The translation gives incessant proof of Chaucer's remarkable ear for metrical harmony, and also of his picturesque imagination ; for though in many places he has followed his original with scrupulous fidelity, he not unfrequently adds vigorous touches of his own. The most remarkable illustration of this is the description of the character of a true gentleman, not a hint of which can be found in the original.* G3. (ii.) The Court of Love is written in the name of " Phi- logenet of Cambridge," clerk (or student), who is directed by Mercury to appear at the Court of Venus. The above designa- tion has induced some critics to suppose that the poet meant 36 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. under it to indicate himself, and they have drawn from it a most unfounded supposition that Chaucer had studied at Cambridge. The poet proceeds to give a description of the Castle of Love, where Admetus and Alcestis preside as king and queen. Phi- logenet is then conducted by Philobone to the Temple, where he sees Venus and Cupid; and where the oath of allegiance and obedience to the twenty commandments of Love is administered to the faithful. The hero is then presented to the Lady Rosial, with whom, in strict accordance with Provencal poetical custom, he has become enamoured in a dream. The most curious part of the poem is the celebration of the grand festival of Love on May- day, when an exact parody of the Catholic Matin service for Trinity Sunday is chanted by various birds in honor of the God of Love. G4. (iii.) In the Assembly of Fowls we have a poem not very dissimilar in form and versification to the preceding. The sub- ject is a debate carried on before the Parliament of Birds to decide the claims of three eagles for the possession of a beautiful formel (female or hen), by which the Lady Blanche of Lancaster is probably intended. 65. (iv.) The Cttckoiv and the Nightingale, though of no great length, is one of the most charming among this class of Chaucer's productions : it describes a controversy between the two birds, the former of which was among the poets and allegorists of the Middle Ages the emblem of profligate celibacy, while the Night- ingale was the type of constant and virtuous conjugal love. In this poem we meet with a striking example of that exquisite sen- sibility to the sweetness of external nature, and in particular to the song of birds, which was possessed by Chaucer in a higher degree, perhaps, than by any other poet in the world.* GO. (v.) The Flower and the Leaf is an allegory, probably written to celebrate the marriage of Philippa, John of Gaunt's daughter, with John, king of Portugal. A lady, unable to sleep, wanders out into a forest on a spring morning an opening or mine en scene which often recurs in poems of this age and seat- ing herself in a delicious arbor, listens to the alternate song of the goldfinch and the nightingale. Her reverie is suddenly in- terrupted by the approach of a band of ladies clothed in white, and garlanded with laurel, agnus-castus, and woodbine. These * Sec the inimitable passage from line 63 to 83. A. B. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 37 accompany their queen in singing a roundel, and are in their turn interrupted by the sound of trumpets and by the appearance of nine armed knights, followed by a splendid train of cavaliers and ladies. These joust for an hour, and then advance to the first company, and each knight leads a lady to a laurel to which they make an obeisance. Another troop of ladies now ap- proaches, habited in green and led by a queen, who do rever- ence to a tuft of flowers, while the leader sings a " bargaret," or pastoral song, in honor of the daisy, " si douce est la Mar- guerite." The sports are broken off, first by the heat of the sun which withers all the flowers, and afterwards by a violent storm of thunder and rain, in which the knights and ladies in green are pitifully drenched ; while the white company shelter them- selves under the laurel. Then follows the explanation of the al- legory: the white queen and her party represent chastity; the knights the Nine Worthies ; the cavaliers crowned with laurel the Knights of the Round Table, the Peers of Charlemagne, and the Knights of the Garter, to which illustrious order, then re- cently founded, the poet wished to pay a compliment. The Queen and ladies in green represent Flora and the followers of sloth and idleness. In general the flower typifies vain pleasure, the leaf, virtue and industry; the former being " a thing fading with every blast," while the latter " abides with the root, not- withstanding the frosts and winter storms." The poem is written in the seven-lined stanza, and contains many curious and beautiful passages. 67. (vi., vii.) The two poems entitled Chaucer's Dream and the Book of the Duchess are both allegorical ; and allude, though sometimes rather obscurely as regards details, the first to the courtship and marriage, the second to the grief, of John of Gaunt at the loss of his first wife. There may be traced in the Dream allusions to Chaucer's own courtship and marriage, which took place about 1360. 68. (viii.) For its extraordinary union of brilliant description with learning and humor, the poem of the Hftise of Fame is sufficient of itself to stamp Chaucer's reputation. Under the fashionable form of a dream or vision, it gives us a vivid and striking picture of the Temple of Glory, crowded with aspirants for immortal renown, and adorned with myriad statues of great poets and historians, and the House of Rumor, thronged with pilgrims, pardoners, sailors, and other retailers of wonderful 38 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. reports. The Temple, though originally borrowed from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, exhibits in its architecture and adorn- ment that strange mixture of pagan antiquity with the Gothic details of mediaeval cathedrals, that strikes us in the poetry and in the illuminated MSS. of the fourteenth century. In richness of fancy it far surpasses Pope's imitation, The Temple of Fame. 9. (ix.) The Legend of Good Women is supposed, from many circumstances, to have been one of the latest of Chaucer's com- positions ; and to have been written as a kind of amende honora- ble or recantation for his unfavorable pictures of female char- acter. Though the matter is closely translated, for the most part, from the Heroides of Ovid, the coloring given to the sto- ries is entirely Catholic and mediaeval; and Dido, Cleopatra, and Medea are regarded as the Martyrs of Saint Venus and Saint Cupid. The poet's original intention was to compose the legends of nineteen celebrated victims of the tender passion ; but the work having been left incomplete, we possess only those of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, and Medea, Lucretia, Ariadne, Philomela, Phillis, and Hypermnestra. The poem is in ten-syllable heroic couplets, the rhymed heroic measure, and exhibits a consummate mastery over the resources of the English language and prosody; and many striking passages of descrip- tion are interpolated by Chaucer. A few droll anachronisms also maybe noted, as the introduction of cannon at the Battle of Actium. 70. (x.) The poem which the generations contemporary with, or succeeding to, the age of Chaucer placed nearest to the level of the Canterbury Talcs, was unquestionably the Troilus and Crcseide for which work the poet indubitably drew his mate- rials from Boccacio's poem entitled Filostrato. The story itself, which was extremely popular in the Middle Ages and later, iShakspeare himself having dramatized it, has been traced to Guido di Colonna, and to the mysterious book entitled Trophc of the equally mysterious author Lollius, so often quoted in Chaucer's age, and respecting whom all is obscure and enigmat- ical.* Some of the names and personages of the story, as Cryscida (Chryseis), Troilus, Pandarus, Diomedc, and Priam, are obviously borrowed from the Iliad; but their relative posi- * In the opinion of Mr. Henry Morley this mysterioui personage is none other than Boccacio himself. A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 39 tions and personality have been most strangely altered; and the principal action of the poem, being the passionate love,of Troi- lus for his cousin, her ultimate infidelity, and the immoral sub- serviency of Pandarus, bear the stamp of mediaeval society, and have no resemblance whatever to the incidents and feelings of the heroic age. Chaucer has frequently adhered to the text of the Filostrato, and has adopted the musical and flo\ving Italian stanza of seven lines; but in the conduct of the story he has shown himself far superior to his original, the characters of Troilus, Pandarus, and Creseide in the Filostrato, contrasting very unfavorably with the pure, noble, and ideal personages of the English poet, whose morality indeed is far higher and more refined than that of his great Florentine contemporary. 71. Chaucer's greatest and most original work is, beyond all comparison, the Canterbury Tales. (13*) It is in this that he has poured forth in inexhaustible abundance all his stores of wit, humor, pathos, splendor, and knowledge of humanity: it is this which will place him, till the remotest posterity, in the first rank among poets and character-painters. 72. The plan of this great work is singularly happy, enabling the poet to give us, first, a collection of admirable daguerreo- types of the various classes of English society, and then to place in the mouths of these persons a series of separate tales highly beautiful when regarded as compositions and judged on their own independent merits, but deriving-an infinitely higher inter- est and appropriateness from the way in which they harmonize with their respective narrators. The poet informs us, after giv- ing a brief but picturesque description of spring, that being about to make a pilgrimage from London to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in the cathedral of Canterbury, he passes the night previous to his departure at the hostelry of the Tabard in Southwark. While at the inn the hostelry is filled by a crowd of pilgrims bound to the same destination : " In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wcnden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with ful devout cornge, At night was come into that hostclrie. Wei nyiie and twenty in a companye * Of soiidry folk, by aventure i-falle In felawsehipc, and piigryms were thei alle, That toward Canterbury woldeu ryde." * But in his subsequent enumeration (see next page), Chaucer counts thirty persons. 40 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. 73. This goodly company, assembled in a manner so natural in those times of pilgrimages and of difficult and dangerous roads, agree to travel in a body ; and at supper the host of the Tabard, a jolly and sociable personage, proposes to accompany the party and serve as a guide ; and at the same time suggests that they may much enliven the tedium of their journey by re- lating stories as they ride. He is to be accepted by the whole society as a kind of judge or moderator, by whose decisions ev- ery one is to abide. As the journey to Canterbury occupies one day, and the return another, the plan of the whole work, had Chaucer completed it, would Have comprised the adventures on the outward journey, the arrival at Canterbury, a description, in all probability, of the splendid religious ceremonies and the visits to the numerous shrines and relics in the Cathedral, the return to London, the farewell supper at the Tabard, and disso- lution of the pleasant company, which would separate as natu- rally as they had assembled. Harry Bailey proposes that each pilgrim should relate two tales on the journey out, and two more on the way home ; and that, on the return of the party to Lon- don, he who should be adjudged to have related the best and most amusing story should sup at the common cost. Such is the setting, or framework, in which the separate tales are insert- ed ; and the tales themselves are admirably in accordance with the characters of the persons who relate them, and the remarks and criticisms to which they give rise are no less humorous and natural, some of the stories suggesting others, just as would happen in real life under the same circumstances. The pilgrims are persons of almost all ranks and classes of society; and in the inimitable description of their manners, persons, dress, horses, &c., with which the poet has introduced them, we behold a vast and minute portrait gallery of the social state of England in the fourteenth century. They are (i.) A Knight; (2.) A Squire; (3.) A Yeoman, or military retainer of the class of the free peasants, who, in the quality of an archer, was bound to accompany his feudal lord to war; (4.) A Prioress, a lady of rank, superior of a nunnery; (5, 6, 7, 8.) A Nun and three Priests, in attendance upon this lady; (9.) A Monk, a person represented as handsomely dressed and equipped, and passion- ately fond of hunting and good cheer; (10.) A Friar, or Mendi- cant Monk; (u.) A Merchant; (12.) A Clerk, or Student of the University of Oxford ; (13.) A Serjeant of the Law; (14.) A A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 41' Franklin or rich country gentleman; (15, 16, 17, 18, 19.) Five wealthy burgesses or tradesmen, a Haberdasher, or dealer in silk and cloth, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer, and a Tapisser, or maker of carpets and hangings; (20.) A Cook, or rather what in old French is called a rdtissettr, i. e., the keeper of a cook's- shop ; (21.) A Shipman, the master of a trading vessel; (22.) A Doctor of Physic; (23.) A Wife of Bath, a rich cloth-manufac- turer; (24.) A Parson, or secular parish priest; (25.) A Plough- man, the brother of the preceding personage; (26.) A Miller; (27.) A Manciple, or steward of a college or religious house; (28.) A Reeve, bailiff or intendant of the estates of some wealthy landowner; (29.) ASompnour, or Sumner, an officer in the then formidable ecclesiastical courts, whose duty was to summon or cite before the spiritual jurisdiction those who had offended against the canon laws; (30.) A Pardoner, or vendor of Indul- gences from Rome. To these thirty persons must be added Chaucer himself, and the Host of the Tabard, making in all thirty- two. 74. Now, if each of these pilgrims had related four tales, viz., two on the journey to Canterbury, and two on their return, the work would have contained one hundred and twenty-eight sto- ries, independently of the subordinate incidents and conversa- tions. In reality, however, the pilgrims do not arrive at their destination, and there are many evidences of confusion in the tales which Chaucer has given us, leading to the conclusion that the materials were not only incomplete, but left in an unarranged state by the poet. The stories that we possess are twenty-five in number, three of which, the Cook's, the Squire's, and Chau- cer's first, are " left half," or less than half, " told," and one, Gamelyn,* is either entirely spurious or written by the poet for a different purpose. Thus we have only twenty-one complete tales, so fhat eleven of the personages are left silent. Besides a Canon and his Yeoman unexpectedly join the cavalcade dur- ing the journey, but it is uncertain whether this episode, which was probably an afterthought of the poet, takes place on the journey to or from Canterbury. The Canon, who is represented as an Alchemist, half swindler and half dupe, is driven away from the company by shame at his attendant's indiscreet dis- closures ; and the latter, remaining with the pilgrims, relates a * The Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, if really written by Chaucer, was perhaps intended to be relat- ed on the journey home. 42 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. most amusing story of the villanous artifices of the charlatans who pretended to possess the Great Arcanum. The stories nar- rated by the pilgrims are admirably introduced by what the author calls " prologues," consisting either of remarks and criti- cisms on the preceding tale, and which naturally suggest what is to follow, and of the incidents of the journey itself. The Tales are all in verse, with the exception of two, that of the Parson, and Chaucer's second narrative, the allegorical story of Melibeus and his wife Prudence. Those in verse exhibit an im- mense variety of metrical forms, all of which Chaucer handles with consummate ease and dexterity; indeed, it may be boldly affirmed that no English poet whatever is more exquisitely melo- dious than he : and the nature of the versification will often assist us in tracing the sources from whence Chaucer derived or adapt- ed his materials. Indeed he appears in no single demonstrable instance to have taken the trouble to invent the intrigue or sub- ject-matter of any of his stories, but to have freely borrowed them either from the multitudinous fabliaux of the Provencal poets, the legends of the mediaeval chroniclers, or the immense storehouse of the Gesta Romanorum, and the rich treasury of the early Italian writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio. 75. The Tales themselves may be roughly divided into the two great classes of serious, tragic, or pathetic, and comic or hu- morous ; in both styles Chaucer has seldom been equalled, and assuredly never surpassed. The finest of the elevated and pa- thetic stories are the Knighfs Tale the longest of them all, in which is related the adventure of Palamon and Arcite; the Squire s Tale, a wild half-Oriental story of love, chivalry, and enchantment, the action of which goes on " at Sarray (Bakhtchi- Sarai) in the lond of Tartary ; " the Man of Law's Tale, the beautiful and pathetic story of distance ; the Prioress's Talc, the charming legend of " litel Hew of Lincoln," the Christian child murdered by the Jews for so perseveringly singing his hymn to the Virgin ; * and above all the Clerk of Oxford's Talc, per- haps the most beautiful pathetic narration in the whole range of literature. This, the story of Griselda, the model and heroine of wifely patience and obedience, is the crown and pearl of all the serious and pathetic narratives, as the Knight's Tale is the * Though the scene of this tale is laid in Asia yet Die principal incidents of the vrcll-knowa English, legend are retained. A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 43 masterpiece among the descriptions of love and chivalric mag- nificence. 76. We will rapidly note the sources from which, as far as can be ascertained at present, Chaucer derived the subjects of the narratives above particularized. The Knight's Tale is freely borrowed from the Thcseida of Boccacio, many of th incidents of the latter being themselves taken from the Thebais of Statins. Though the action and personages of this noble story are as- signed to classical antiquity, it is needless to say that the senti- ments, manners, and feelings of the persons introduced are those of chivalric Europe; the " Two Noble Kinsmen," Palamon and Arcite, being the purest ideal types of the knightly charac- ter, and the decision of their claims to the hand of Emilie by a combat in champ clos, an incident completely alien from the habits of the heroic age. The Squire's Tale bears evident marks of Oriental origin ; but whether it be a legend directly derived from Eastern literature, or received by Chaucer after having fil- tered through a Romance version, is now uncertain. It is equal to the preceding story in splendor and variety of incident and word-painting, but far inferior in depth of pathos and ideal ele- vation of sentiment; yet it was by the Squire's Tale that Milton characterized Chaucer in that inimitable passage of the Penseroso where he evokes the recollections of the great poet : " And call up him that left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold, Of Cambal, and of Algarsife, Aud who had Cannce to wife That owned the virtuous ring and glass; And of the wondrous horse of hfass On which the Tartar king did ride." The Man of Laiv's Tale is taken with little variation from Gow- er's voluminous poem " Confessio Amantis" the incidents of Gower's narrative being in their turn traceable to a multitude of romances. 77. The pedigree of the most pathetic of Chaucer's stories, that of Patient Griselda, narrated by the clerk of Oxford, is trace- able to Petrarch's Latin translation of the last tale in Boccacio's Decameron, which Petrarch sent to Boccacio in 1373, the year before his own death. 78. The finest of Chaucer's comic and humorous stories are those of the Miller, the Reeve, the Sompnour, the Canon's Yeo- 44 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. man, and the Nun's Priest. Though all of these are excellent, the three best are the Miller's, the Reeve's, and the Sompnour's; and among these last it is difficult to give the palm of drollery, acute painting of human nature, and exquisite ingenuity of inci- dent. It is much to be regretted that the comic stories turn upon events of ft kind which the refinement of modern manners ren- ders it impossible to analyze ; but it should be remembered that society in Chaucer's day, though perhaps not less moral in reality, was far more outspoken and simple, and permitted and enjoyed allusions which have been proscribed by the more pre- cise delicacy of later ages. The first of "these irresistible droll- eries is probably the adaptation to English life for the scene is laid at Oxford of some old fabliau; the Reeve's Tale may be found in substance in the 6th novel of the Ninth Day of the Decameron : the Sompnour's Tale, though probably from a mediaeval source, has not hitherto been traced. The admirable wit, hunior, and learning, with which in the Canon's Teaman's Tale Chaucer exposes the rascalities of the pretenders to alchem- ical knowledge, may have been derived from his own experience of the arts of these swindlers. The tale may be compared with Ben Jonson's comedy of the Alchemist. The tale assigned to the Nun's Priest is an exceedingly humorous apologue of the Cock and the Fox, in which, though the dramatis personee are animals, they are endowed with such a droll similitude to the human character, that the reader enjoys at the same time the apparently incompatible pleasures of sympathizing with them as human beings, and laughing at their fantastic assumption of reason as lower creatures. 79. A remark has been made, some pages back, on the cir- cumstance of two of the stories being written in prose. It may be not uninteresting to investigate this exception. When Chaucer is applied to by the Host, he commences a rambling puerile romance of chivalry, entitled the Rime of Sir Thopas, which promises to be an interminable story of knight-errant adven- tures, combats with giants, dragons, and enchanters, and is written in the exact style and metre of the Trouvere narrative poems the only instance of this versification being employed in the Canterbury Tales. He goes on gallantly " in the style his books of chivalry had taught him," and, like Don Quixote, "imitating, as near as he could, their very phrase;" but he is A. D. 1340-1400. CHAUCER. 45 suddenly interrupted, with many expressions of comic disgust, by the merry host : " ' No morof this, for Goddes dignite! ' Quod our Iloste, ' for thou makest me So wery of thy verray lewcdncsse, That, al so wisly God my soule blessc, Myn eeres aken for thy drafty spcche. Now such a ryin the devcl I byteche! This may wel be ryia dogerel,' quod he." 80. Chaucer, then, with great goodnature and a readiness which marks the man of the world, offers to tell " a litel thing in prose; " and commences the long allegorical tale of Melibeus and his -wife Prudence, in which, though the matter is often tiresome enough, he shows himself as great a master of prose as of poetry. (15). 81. The other prose tale is narrated by the Parson, who, being represented as a somewhat simple and narrow-minded though pious and large-hearted pastor, characteristically refuses to in- dulge the company with what can only minister to vain pleasure, and proposes something that may tend to edification, " moralite and vertuous matiere ; " and commences a long and very curious sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins, their causes and remedies a most interesting specimen of the theological literature of the day. It is divided and subdivided with all the painful minuteness of scholastic divinity; but it breathes throughout a noble spirit of evangelical piety, and in many passages attains great dignity of expression. 82. Besides these two Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote in prose a translation of Boethius' De Consolatione, and an imita- tion of that work, under the title of The Testament of Love, and an incomplete astrological work, On the Astrolabe, addressed to his son Lewis in 1391. 83. The general plan of the Canterbury Tales is believed to have been taken from the Decameron of Boccacio, though the English poet's conception must be allowed to be infinitely superior to that of the Italian, whose ten accomplished young gentlemen and ladies assemble in their luxurious villa to escape from the terrible plague which was then, in sad reality, devastating Florence. 84. The difficulty of reading and understanding Chaucer has been much exaggerated. The principal rule that the student should keep in mind is that the French words, so abundant in 46 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IV. his writings, had not yet been so modified, by changes in their orthography and pronunciation, as to become anglicized, and are therefore to be read with their French accent; and secondly, that the final e which terminates so many English words had not yet become an e mute, and is to be pronounced as a separate syllable, as love, Jiopc, love, hope ; and finally, the past termination of the verb ed is almost invariably to be made a separate syllable. Some curious traces of the old Anglo-Saxon grammar, as the in- flections of the personal and possessive pronouns, are still re- tained ; as well as of the Teutonic past participle, in the prefix i or y (ifalle, yron, German gef alien, geronneit}, and a few other details of the Teutonic formation of the verb. 85. Many attempts have been made to reduce Chaucer's writ- ings to the language and diction of modern times ; and even some distinguished poets have tried their skill in this way, but with very indifferent success. Wordsworth has adhered with tolerable fidelity to the language, and consequently to the spirit, of the original. His Cuckoo and Nightingale, Prioress's Talc, and Troilus and Cresida, really do retain a good deal of Chaucer; but the less sympathetic minds of Dryden and Pope made even this moderate degree of success impossible. The Palamon and Arcite, Wife of BatJis Tale, Cock and Fox, and Flower and Leaf of Dryden, are perhaps very pleasant reading; but everything characteristic of the greater poet, that subtle essence which is everywhere present in his works, has evaporated utterly. Pope's failure in the Prologue to the Wife of Bath^ and in the Mcr- chants Tale, is no less marked. A. D. 1340-HOO..' CHAUCEKS CONTEMPORARIES. 47 CHAPTER V. THE CONTEMPORARIES OF CHAUCER. 86. INTELLECTUAL power, it is said, has a tendency, in all countries where it has been developed, to gather in clusters. It seldom, if ever, occurs in literature that a single isolated figure is found standing alone that a "bright particular star" shines forth unattended by the lesser lights, which shed a steady, though less brilliant, lustre over the literary firmament. Throughout the history of English, as well as of classical literature, we in- variably find the great names grouped into distinct constellations round some one star of the first magnitude, whose surpassing radiance, by attracting the gaze exclusively to itself, often serves to make us insensible to the no less real splendor of its humble companions. And so it is with the age of Chaucer. From one 'poet of transcendent merit it has gained a distinct character and a distinct interest; by him mainly it has been m,ade fruitful throughout all time; but he, too, is but the central figure of a group the most splendidly endowed genius in a band of rare intellects. 87. No writings not even those of Chaucer himself so faithfully reflect the popular feeling during the great social and religious movement that forms so striking a feature of the latter half of the fourteenth century, as that very remarkable series of poems which appeared under the name of PIERS PLOUGH- MAN. {11} In these works the deep-seated discontent of the Commons with the course of affairs in Church and State found a voice. They are three in number: the Vision the Creed and the Complaint of Piers Ploughman, They bear the closest resemblance to one another in form and spirit, as well as in style of execution, and were all written, though at considerable intervals, within the same half century. The first in merit as in date (1362?), which also formed the model for the others, and is much the longest, is the Vision. Allusions to the treaty of Bretigny^ made in 1360, and. to the great tempest of 1362, would 48 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. V. seem to fix the latter year, or thereabouts, as the time of its composition ; and tradition confidently assigns its authorship to one Robert Langlande, who is otherwise unknown. Two things are tolerably clear from the work itself that the writer was a Churchman, and that he sympathized heartily with the new spirit that was spreading through the laboring classes of the nation. In this work Piers Plotighman (or Peter the Plough- man} is a .purely allegorical personage a sort of personifica- tion of the peasantry and is the subject, not the seer, of the Vision. The Latin title more exactly conveys its nature ; it is Visio Willclmi de Pictro Ploughman a vision seen by the author, who is here called William, concerning the working men of England. The dreamer, exhausted by his long wanderings " wery for-wandred," he says himself goes to sleep on the Malvern Hills, and soon becomes aware of a goodly company gathered before him in a field : "A fair fecld ful of folk Fond I there bitwcne, Of alle manere of men, The nicene and the riehe, Werchyuge and wandrynge." In a word, representatives of every section of society are there assembled. He is somewhat puzzled at first to understand what all this may mean, when a " lovely lady," descending from a castle, announces herself as Holy Church, expounds to him the meaning of the scene that lies before him, and after leaving with him the key of the mystery, departs. The poet then proceeds to describe the various incidents that took place in this typical assembly, each of which shadows forth in an easily-penetrated allegory some move in the great game played by king, ecclesias- tic, and noble. It consists of nearly eight thousand double verses (or couplets), arranged in twenty passtts, or sections, so little connected with one another as to appear almost separate poems. Its prevalent spirit is that of satire, aimed against abuses and vices in general, but in particular against the cor- ruptions of the Church, which are assailed with great force and spirit. 88. The second, or Creed of Piers Ploughman (1385?), is sup- posed to have been written some twenty or thirty years later than the Vision. Though an evident imitation of the earlier work, it differs from it in many important respects. In it Piers A. D. 1325-1408. JOHN OOWER. 49 .Ploughman is no longer an allegorical personage, but a real flesh and blood representative of the sons of the soil : the author is an ardent disciple of Wiclif, who attacks the doctrines as \vell as the discipline of the Church ; and it contains no political sat- ire whatever. 89. The third, or Complaint of Piers Ploughman (1399?), is a mere fragment for, in common with the Creed, it seems to have been rigidly proscribed by the ruling powers and its tone is entirely political. It was composed during the few months that intervened between the capture of King Richard and the accession of Henry Bolingbroke in 1399. 90. All three are constructed on the 'same metrical principle, which is a mixture of alliteration and rhythmical accent, without rhyme ; and they are the last and most perfect specimens of the kind in any form of the language. In this respect, as well as in the character of the allegory and their somewhat obsolete style, they would seem to indicate a distinct return to the ancient models ; but the proportion of French w r ords found in them is .just as great as in Chaucer. But, though the earliest of them is later in date than the earliest of Chaucer's works, their diction is more archaic, and a more considerable number of their words has fallen out of use. 91. A notable fact in the history of these works is the great popularity they afterwards attained on their being first printed in the year 1550, when they not only materially promoted the growth of Reformation principles, but contributed to the mental development of more than one great intellect. The character of the poet Spenser was almost entirely moulded by them and their great contemporary. 92. But the name that is most closely linked with Chaucer's is that of JOHN GOWER (13.25?-! 408). Born some time before Chaucer, this excellent poet and man lived in the most intimate, though it would seem not unbroken, friendship with him during a great part of their joint lives, and finally survived him for eight years. It is to " moral Gower" that the " Troilus and Creseide " was dedicated : he, too, became the poet's represen- tative when he was absent in Italy in 1373 ; and he pays a high compliment to his friend in the first edition of his English work, the Confcssio Arnault's. (12) The omission of this passage in the later edition, and the emphatic language in which Chaucer, in the Man of Law's prologue, denounces the " corscd stories " 4 50 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. V. introduced by the other into his work, are supposed to indicate a rupture of this famous friendship ; but there is happily no necessity for so unwelcome an explanation. 93. The course of Gower's life was by no means so active or so full of vicissitudes as his friend's. A member of an affluent county family in Kent, he appears to have passed his life mainly in the management of his property and in the composition of his literary works. Yet he was not an unconcerned spectator of the stirring events of his time, as all his extant works evince. From a loyal subject of Richard of Bordeaux he changed into an avowed partisan of Henry of Lancaster, whose badge, the collar of the silver swan, still adorns the recumbent effigy that covers his bones in St. Saviour's, Southwark. 94. And the three books, on which the poet's head is there represented as reclining, are typical, not only of the work of his life, but of the three great literary principles that were at wai in his time. The French language still maintained its ground as the language of the educated classes ; and accordingly even our countryman, when addressing himself " al universite de tout le monde,"felt himself constrained to use the alien tongue; but the one great result of his labors therein, the Speculum Medi- tantis, is no longer extant, the poem once taken for it having turned out to be an entirely different work. This was the last considerable contribution to French literature in England. 95. Again, when Gower undertook to describe the diseased condition of English society in his time (1382?) not even then did he adopt the native tongue ; but in the Vox Clamantis he strove to give utterance to his oppressed feelings in alternate Latin hexameters and pentameters. This, generally believed to be the best of his works, is a poem in seven books, written on the subject of the great insurrection of the Commons in 1381, of which he gives us a lively picture in the first Book. The fol- lo\ving Books are taken up mainly with elaborate treatises on religion and society, and addresses to the different professions. To this work he afterwards appended the Tripartite Chronicle^ written in leonine hexameters. 9G. Finally, when Chaucer had shown the great capabilities cf the native speech under a skilful hand, Gower in his old age produced the Confcssio Amantis (1393) in that tongue. (12) This work, which, though not the ablest, is by far the most in- A. D. 1325-1408. JOHNOOWER. 51 teresting to us, was first undertaken at the request of King Rich- ard, to whom, the poet says, " Belong cth my lejjeaunce, With all uiiii hartes obeisauuce," and was finished in the " yere sixtenthe " of the same king's reign (1392-3). This edition contains the celebrated passage, in Miich Venus represents Chaucer as her 'disciple and poet, and expresses a wish, that in his " later age " he should " sette an end to all his werke " by writing the "Testament of Love." Subsequently, however, a second edition of the poem appeared, differing from the first merely in the omission of this compliment to his great contemporary, and in the introduction of a new prologue, which, without a single reference to King Richard, professes" an entire affection for Henry of Lancaster, to whom the book is now dedicated. 97. The Confessio Amantis is a poem in the octo-syllabic me- tre, consisting of eight Books, in addition to the Prologue ; one being given to each of the seven deadly sins, and another in- serted in the body of the work on the subject of philosophy gen- erally. It is in reality a collection of stories, strung together upon a very simple, but not over felicitous plan, which is much inferior to Chaucer's, and hardly equal even to Boccacio's. In- stead of a number of characters, we have but two, Lover and Genius ; the former, by direction of Venus, confessing his sins to the latter, who, as the goddess's own clerk, listens to the pen- itent, and then, before shriving him, illustrates the enormity of his offences by an immense number of apposite stories. These are taken from all manner of sources the Bible, Ovid, the " Gesta Romanorum " (the oldest collection of tales extant), God- frey of Viterbo, French lays and fabliaux, &c. and illustrate the varied and extensive reading of the author. The Confessio Amantis possesses real merit, and is not without a certain charm far congenial minds; but its excellences, such as they are, are Balanced by many defects. It is tedious, overlaid with learning to a wearisome extent, and utterly without Chaucer's humor, passion, and love of nature. The author, while sensible of and deploring the disjointed state of society in his time, and the offences of men in high place, is yet a stout supporter of the old order of things. His popularity with the cultivated classes con- 52 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. V. tinued for many generations. James of Scotland, in the fifteenth century, describes him and Chaucer as " Superlative as poetis laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate ; " and Shakspeare, in the sixteenth, not only borrows from him the materials of " Pericles," but brings him upon the stage as chorus to the same play. 98. A greater poet than Gower still remains to be noticed JOHN BARBOUR (1316-1395?), Archdeacon of Aberdeen, whose life was almost strictly contemporaneous with Chaucer's. (14-} Though a Scotchman, he fairly deserves a place among English poets, for the growth of the literary dialect had not yet produced any material divergence in the language of the two countries, nor had their union under the same king yet converted the Northern speech into a patois. There were differences certainly between the two tongues, but hardly more considerable than those exist- ing between parts of England itself. His great poem is the Brus, or Bruce, a chronicle in rhymed octo-syllabics of the ad- ventures of King Robert, extending to about twelve thousand five hundred lines. It is a work of great merit, both poetical and historical; for while occasionally embellishing the great king's history with romantic incidents and details, it seems in the main to adhere with tolerable fidelity to literal truth. After Chaucer no writer of the fourteenth century is so readable as Barbour. He also paid several visits to England, and studied at Oxford in his old age, where two curious memorials of him have been lately discovered a versified translation of the " Troy Book," and a collection of fifty lives of the Saints. PROSE LITERATURE IN THE TIME OF CHAUCER. 99. The most meritorious writer of English prose in Chaucer's time was undoubtedly Chaucer himself; but his rare power in this department has been eclipsed completely by his transcen- dent genius as a poet. Of those writers whose fame depends on prose works alone, the chief are MANDEVILLE, TREVISA, and WICLIFFE. The first, Sir John Mandcville (1300-1372), who is sometimes, but erroneously, called the father of English prose, published his well-known volume of travels in 1356. (J6*) This, which Mr. Ilallam calls our earliest English book, professes to be an authentic account of what the author saw on his travels A. D. 1324-1384. JOHN OF THE VIS A. WICLIFFE. 53 through the most distant countries of the East, but is, in reality, a lying collection of marvels, worthy only of being classed -with the adventures of Baron Munchausen. There is, doubtless, a real element of truth in the work, but it is blencjed with such a large proportion of falsehood as to make the whole narrative worthless. The style, however, is straightforward and una- dorned, and the composition may still be read with but little difficulty. 100. JOHN OF TREVISA (11.1387), besides other works, translated into English the Latin Polychronicon of Ralph Higden, which he finished about the year 1387 a work which Caxton printed in 1482, with an additional chapter from his own pen, bringing the narrative down to the year 1460. From these two produc- tions we learn historically, what is otherwise a matter of rea- sonable inference, that the three languages still existed side by side in England, but that English was gradually recovering the supi-emacy. Mandeville, in his Prologue, tells us that he had " put this boke out of Latyn into Frensche, and translated it agen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that every man of his nation may understand it; " and to Trevisa we are indebted for the fact that in 1385 "in al the gramere scholes of Engelonde childern leth Freynsch and construeth and lurneth an Eng- lysch." 101. No name of the time perhaps will be longer remembered than that of the man who first gave a complete copy of the Scrip- tures to the English people in the English tongue, JOHN WIC- LIFFE (1324-1384). (17) This remarkable man, of almost as great importance in the literary as in the political history of our nation, was born, it is said, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, in 1324, studied at Oxford, and eventually rose to considerable academical and ecclesiastical preferments, though his life was marked by many vicissitudes. After having been alternately supported and abandoned by men of great influence, of whom John of Gaunt was the greatest, he closed his life peacefully at his Lutterworth parsonage in 1384. It was here, after his ene- mies had driven him from his Chair at Oxford, that he com- menced his great translation, which, with the assistance of a priest, named HEREFORD, he is said to have finished about the year 1380. The latter is believed tp have been the author of the work as far as Baruch in the Apocrypha, and Wicliffe himself of the remainder. A revision of their version was made about 54 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. V. ten years after by PURVEY, who introduced many important alterations into the text of his predecessors. 102. But this is not our only obligation to Wicliffe. He was perhaps the first English scholar who made his native tongue the vehicle for attacks on the ecclesiastical system : for his Last ^ff e of the Church (1356), his Apology for the Lollards, and Harmony of the Gospels are written in English. 103. It is impossible to overrate the importance of Wicliffe's great work, both to the language and the nation. Translated, as it was, from the Latin Vulgate, it supplies the principal rea- son that the theological vocabulary of our language is taken mainly from the Lat:n. A. D. 1370-1460. OCCLEVE. LYDGATE. 55 CHAPTER VI. ENGLISH LITERATURE FROM CHAUCER TO SPENSER. 104. WITH the death of Chaucer in 1400 terminates our first great manifestation of intellectual power. To it succeeds a somewhat lengthened period of literary decay as remarkable for the absence, as the preceding was for the presence, of original genius, when the mental energies of the nation seemed well nigh exhausted. For more than a hundred and fifty years we meet with no . first-rate intellect, with hardly a single name worthy to stand even in the second rank. But though singu- larly deficient in great men, the time was by no means barren in results. It is distinguished by one event at least, the importance of which cannot possibly be ovei'-estimated the invention of printing; and it witnessed the revival of learning, and the emancipation of the human mind from ecclesiastical tyranny. It was also a period of unwearied accumulation of materials, when the spiritual activities of the nation were gathering them- selves up for another marvellous outburst. Nor, indeed, was there any break in the chain of succession which links the nine- teeth century to the fourteenth ;* the continuity of literature in both verse and prose was preserved uninterrupted by a line of men of real, though not brilliant, ability; foremost among whom, at least in order of time, come the immediate disciples of Chaucer, OCCLEVE, LYDGATE, and JAMES OF SCOTLAND. 105. Of the first, THOMAS OCCLEVE (1370-1454?), little need be said. Born about 1370, he was in early life the friend, and in later the poetical disciple, of Chaucer, whose death he bewails with simple earnestness, in his most meritorious work the De Rcgimine Principum. This lament is the most striking passage in the poem, which is partly autobiographical and partly re- flective. 100. JOHN LYDGATE (1374-1460?), known sometimes as Dan John of Bury (Bury St. Edmund's), where he passed the greater part of his life as an inmate of its famous monastery, deserves a 56 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VI. much higher place. His works were in great repute in his own century and long after, the fastidious Gray, no less than James of Scotland, finding in him many poetical excellences. He was a very prolific writer ; but his longest and best known produc- tions are the Story of Thebes, the Troy Book, and the Fall of Princes. The first, which is a translation of the Thebaid of Statius, is given as an additional Canterbury Tale, told on the return journey by the author, who represents himself in the pro- logue as having fallen in with Chaucer's pilgrims at the Canter- bury inn, and been allowed to go home in their company. The Fall of Princes is a translation from the " De Casibus Illustrium Virorum " of Boccacio, and is chiefly remarkable for the famous reference to his " maister Chaucer," " the lode-sterre of our lan- guage," whose Monk's Tale is constructed on the same plan. The Latin prose romance of Guido Colonnc, a Sicilian poet, whom Edward I. brought to England, supplied him with the materials for the Troy Book a work of some interest to the antiquarian, as preserving many features of the social life of the fifteenth century. To these may be added, as worthy of special notice, the London Lackpcnny, a short poem of much spirit in the tumbling metre. Its moral will commend it to the sympa- thies of all but a very few the little that can be got in this world without money to pay for it. 107. But the most brilliant poetical name of the fifteenth cen- tury is James I. of Scotland (1394-1437). This, the only really eminent king of the Stuart line, was no doubt indebted for the development of his royal qualifies to the same early adversities to which we owe his great poem, the King's >iiair, (18) writ- ten in the nineteenth and last year of his captivity in England. In 1405, when but eleven years old, he fell into the hands of Henry IV., by whom and whose successors he was detained a prisoner for almost a quarter of a century ; which period, how- ever, was not without results to himself and his nation. His Quair (Quire or Book) is a poetical record of the circumstances under which he first met, and won the heart of, his devoted Queen, Jane Beaufort, daughter of John Earl of Somerset, and consequently granddaughter of John of Gaunt and of Chaucer's sister-in-law, Catherine Swyneford, whose bright figure, " The fairest or the frcschest young flowrc," he caught a glimpse of from the window of his prison, as she A. D. 1394-1460. JAMES I. PECOCK. 57 talked with her attendants " under the Toure." In six cantos, or about fourteen hundred lines, the royal captive describes his sad reflections in his prison-house, the sudden appearance of this beautiful vision, its peerless loveliness, his many fluctuating emotions, his hopes and despairs, and the happy ending of his courtship. No poem of equal merit was produced in the long interval between Chaucer and Spenser; it is distinguished by a genuine poetic sensibility, a manly delicacy of feeling, and ten- derness of expression not often found. Many other effusions are ascribed to King James, some of which undoubtedly belong to his more licentious namesake of the following century. His English training, his devotion to English models, and the fact that he composed his great work in England, fully justify us in calling him an English poet. 108. Besides these tlree, this century produced not 'a single respectable versifier. They are connected with one another by a sort of affinity, in being all professed disciples of Chaucer, whose influence upon them is shown by the very metre in which they wrote the rhyme royal. This stanza, first made popular by Chaucer, and a great favorite with the poets of the next two centuries, is said, indeed, to have gained its name from being that of the King's Qucit'r, though other explanations are sug- gested. It consists of seven heroic lines, of which the first and third, the second, fourth, and fifth, and the sixth and seventh rhyme together, being in fact the well-known ottava rima with the fifth line omitted. 109. Prose literature made muclT greater progress in this cen- tury than her elder sister, though half of it had already elapsed before any striking composition appeared even in this depart- ment. REGINALD PECOCK (1390-1460?), Bishop of Chichester, whose somewhat remarkable career extends over a large portion of this century, after combating the doctrines of the Lollards in several English pamphlets and sermons, finally published, un- fortunately for himself, about 14^0, the elaborate work entitled the Represser of O~>er-much Blaming of the Clergy. In his zeal for the Church he seems to have overstepped the prescribed lim- its of orthodoxy; and he paid the penalty of his rashness in the Abbey of Thorney, where he lay a prisoner from 1457 until his death. "In diction and arrangement of sentences," says Mr. Marsh, "the JRepressor is much in advance of the chronicles of Pecock's age^ the grammar, both in accidence and syntax, is in 58 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAI>. VI. many points nearly where WiclifFe had left it," his language be- ing more obsolete even than Lydgate's. It is not improbable that, like Spenser after him, he affected a sort of archaism in his style. 110. The Difference between Absolute and Limited Monarchy was written by Sir John Fortescue (1395-1485), Chief Justice to Henry VI., about the year 1470. The De Laudibus Leo-urn An- glice in Latin was a contribution from the same pen to the edu- cation of the young Prince of Wales, whose mental training during his years of exile was under the direction of Sir John. Both these works, and especially the latter, are of great value to the historical student, to whom they furnish direct evidence of the constitutional and legal procedure of the time. 111. Few English names of this age will live as long as that of William Caxton (1412-1491), to wljom England owes her participation in the benefits arising from the greatest invention of modern times the art of printing. The original author of this invention, which was nothing more than the use of mova- ble types in place of the old engraved wooden blocks, is now generally believed to have been John Gutenberg, of Mentz. He had already, it is said-, thought out the plan about 1438, but through poverty was unable to put it into execution until twelve years afterwards, when he met with John Fust, a wealthy mer- chant, by whose assistance he brought out in 1455 the first printed book, the Latin Bible now known as the Mazarin. The art was introduced into England by Caxton, the first-fruits of whose printing-press, set up at Westminster under the patronage of Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, was the Game of the Chessc, which appeared in 1474. From that time until his death in 1491, Caxton labored assiduously at his vocation, giving to the world sixty-three books, of which the vast majority were in Eng- lish; those, too, consisting partly of translations and partly of original works. Many of these translations are from the print- er's own pen. To others of the books he added prefaces of his own composition, so that he is fairly entitled to a place, though not a very high one, among English authors. (26} 112. To one o-f the original writings published by him, the Mort D 'Arthur of SIR THOMAS MALORY, great interest is at- tached bv the present generation. It is the quarry out of which the greatest of our living poets has hewn the materials for one of his finished works, as well as for his earlier essay in the same A. D. 1412-1491. WILLIAM CAXTON. 59 province. Notwithstanding its name, " it treateth," says Caxton, "of the byrth, lyf, and actes of the sayd Kynge Arthur, of his noble Knyghtes of the Roimde Table, their marvayllous en- questes and adventures;" who also states that it was taken by its author out of certain books in the French and reduced into English, and printed by himself in 1485. It is a romance of real chivalry, written in a plain, unadorned English style; free fro ir most of the extravagances of the earlier romances and from many of the repulsive passages which deformed the more ancient Arthurian cycle. The Paston Letters, the earliest collection of the kind in the language, form a regular series, extending from before 1440 until 1505, and are so numerous that they filled five volumes on their first publication. By far the greatest number are written either by or to members of the Paston family, then and afterwards well known in Norfolk and elsewhere, of which Sir William, the " Good Judge," was the first representative of distinction; but the collection contains not a few from the most prominent men of the time, the Duke of York, the Earl of War- wick, the Duke of Norfolk (Shakspeare's "Jockey of Norfolk"), and many others. They were published at intervals, between the years 1787 and 1823 ; the first four volumes under the editor- ship of Sir John Fenn, a Norfolk antiquary, and the fifth under that of his nephew, Serjeant Frere. This collection is of the greatest historical importance, not only from the light it throws upon some of the dark passages of our history, but also from the valuable illustrations it supplies of the domestic manners, and modes of thought and action that prevailed in the fifteenth cen- tury. The inner life of the period is laid open before us; its character and spirit are revealed to us through the very thoughts and words of those that lived in it. No other literary monu- ment could so effectually bring us into contact with the very "form and pressure" of the age. 113. The early part of the sixteenth century is in some respects an improvement upon its predecessor, though in England at least it failed to produce any poet of equal merit with King James. The Pastime of Pleasure of STEPHEN HAWES, a favorite of Henry VII., is a rather dull allegorical poem in rhyme royal; and ALEXANDER BARCLAY'S Ship of Fools is merely a transla- tion of the once celebrated satire of Sebastian Brandt. These works, though of little value in themselves, testify to the marked progress that our versification was making towards grace and 60 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VI. harmony; and in this respect, if in no other, the} r indicate an approach to the manner of Spenser and Shakspeare. 114. The most prolific versifier of this period was JOHN SKEL- TON (1460-1529), who, with WILLIAM ROY, author of the Satire upon the Clergy, is generally taken to typify the then prevalent spirit of revolt against ecclesiastical arrogance and authority., especially as represented by our last great churchman, Cardinal Wolsey. (21) Skelton was himself a much humbler member of the same profession, being rector of Diss, in Norfolk; and wa have the testimony of Erasmus, then a resident in England, to his eminence as a scholar and man of letters. His bitter tongue, however, is said to have drawn down upon him the Cardinal's wrath, from which he was obliged to take refuge in the Sanc- tuary at Westminster, where he died in 1529. His Latin poems, in the headings of which he loved to style himself " Poeta Skelton Laureatus " (an allusion to the honor of the laurel, or degree in verse which he gained at Oxford), evince not a little classical elegance. His serious efforts in English are exceed- ingly heavy and tedious; but his satiric writings, coarse and vulgar as they too often are, show so much force and spirit that they still retain some degree of popularity. There is, perhaps, too much reason for the opinion of Puttenham, who calls him "a rude, rayling rimer;" but any manifestation of intellectual vigor, whatever form it may take, is sure to gain a certain amount of respect in England. The peculiar doggerel measure, too, called by himself " breathlesse rhymes," in which his satiric works are composed, and his use of the familiar speech of the people, have attracted to him a degree of attention which his intrinsic merits by no means entitle him to. His principal attacks upon Wolsey are found in the Bookc of Colin Clout, Why come ye not to Court /*, and the Bouge of Court (/. e. Bouche a Court, diet allowed at Court), which last is written in the favorite stanza of the day rhyme royal. The Scottish King and nation also fell under the lash of Skelton; and he exults in no very generous spirit over the terrible overthrow they sustained at Flodden. Notwithstanding the admiration that is often expressed for this writer, his so-called satirical com- positions hardly rise above the dignity of lampoons ; most of them are simply venomous pasquinades on one of the most mag- nanimous of our statesmen. His happier efforts, indeed, were of a much less ambitious kind. The bright sparkle and animation A. D. 1503-1542. SIX THOMAS WYATT. 61 of his Book of the Spat-row go far to redeem his fame; and the somewhat boisterous liveliness of the Tunning- of Elinor Rum- myng well-nigh compensates for its almost indecent coarseness. The first, one of the most famous of his productions, is a mock heroic dirge or lamentation on the death of a tame sparrow be- longing to the "fair Jane Scrope," and consists of a description of a funeral service performed by all the birds for the repose of Philip Sparrow's soul, to which is prefixed a humorous excom- munication of cats in general, and the cat that murdered poor Philip in particular. Some notice of Skelton's dramatic works will be given in a subsequent chapter. " His learning," in the opinion of Mr. Marsh, " certainly did Httle for the improvement of his English style ; and it may be said of his diction in general, that all that is not vulgar is pedantic." 115. Inferior to Skelton's works in force and vivacity, but vastly superior in elegance and grace, the poems of WYATT and SURREY are the earliest indications of the dawn of the brightest day that our literature has ever seen. These two poets, though unequal in merit, possess so much in common; there is so marked an affinity in their manner and tone of mind that their names are now indissolubly associated together. The higher place is invariably assigned to the younger, HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (1517-1547), whose early death on the scaffold in 1547 has deepened the romantic interest that surrounds his name. ( 23, 24:} His contributions to poetry are not very ex- tensive, but are of considerable importance, as w r ell from their own peculiar excellence as from the new metrical form and new style in which many of them are written. It is to Surrey that we owe two of the greatest literary innovations the introduc- tion of the Sonnet, and the use of Blank Verse; from him we have received our first translation in verse from a classical author made south of the Tweed, and he was the first to write in that involved style, which so strikingly distinguishes the language of Shakspeare from that of Chaucer. A version of the second and fourth Books of the yEneid, in \vhat Milton called " English heroic verse without rhyme ; " numerous sonnets on many sub- jects, chiefly amatory; a satire on the citizens of London, to- gether with paraphrases of Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms, constitute the main portion of his writings. The fanciful theories of some later editors have attached a greater significance than it deserves to his connection with the fair Geraldine, daughter of 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VI. the Earl of Kildare, in whose honor many of his best sonnets were written. 116. SIR THOMAS WYATT (1503-1542), though fourteen years older than his friend, is generally regarded as his poetical dis- ciple, but is undoubtedly a poet of a much lower type. (##) He, too, composed many songs and sonnets on the one inexhaus- tible topic love; and there is some reason to suppose that the lady who forms the subject of these was the ill-starred Ann Boleyn. His satires and metrical versions of the Penitential Psalms supply an additional point of resemblance between him and Surrey. In both the highly beneficent influences of an ac- quaintance with Italian Hterature are manifest; influences which affected the entire structure and spirit of our poetry for the next century and longer, imparting to it a smoothness and melody unknown before, without impairing in the slightest degree its native strength and manliness of tone. Their collected works were first published ten years after Surrey's death, in Tottel's Miscellany; and with them some poems of Nicholas Grimoald, who is chiefly remarkable as having been the first to follow Surrey in the use of blank verse. 117. Though this century has left us but few monuments of good prose, yet these are generally very excellent in their kind. The first name of any distinction is that of SIR THOMAS MORE (1480-1535), whose best known work, however, the Utopia, is written in Latin, though familiarly known to most modern readers by Burnet's translation. It is a philosophical romance belonging to the same class as Bacon's " New Atlantis," and Harrington's " Oceana; " its object being to give a picture of an ideal commonwealth, where the laws and social and political usages are in strict accordance with philosophical perfection. According to Mr. Hallam, it takes its name from King Utopus (o?> ToTrng. nowhere), though Milton in his " Areopagitica" calls it Eutopia (*^). Many of its theories and suggestions are of a most enlightened character, and some of them are far in advance, not only of the author's own time, but even of the present. The contrast between his advocacy of religious toleration in this work, and his own subsequent conduct, when he was brought face to face with the question, should teach a powerful lesson to all statesmen. More's other writings are not voluminous, and, with one notable exception, are of a controversial nature; and display an amount of bitterness and intolerance strangely out A. D. 1515-1568. EOGER ASCHAM. 63 of harmony with his traditional character. This exception is a work called indifferently a Life of Edward V., or a Life of Rich- ard III.. (30) which was first printed anonymously in the edition of Hardynge's Chronicle, published in 1543, and has been ever since confidently ascribed to More. Mr. Hallam pronounces it " the first example of good English language, pure and perspicu- ous, well chosen, without vulgarisms or pedantry." 1 1 8. One of the best translations ever made is LORD BERNERS' Chronicle of Froissart, so exactly does the archaism of its lan- guage reproduce the picturesque old French. (27} Its author was Governor of Calais under Henry VIII., at whose instigation he is suppqsed to have undertaken the work. The first volume was published in 1523, the second in 1525. 119. This period also witnessed the earliest approximation to history in the modern form of the English language; and in the pages of FABYAN and HALL we possess the first attempts at a systematic compilation of past events. The first, who was an alderman and sheriff of London, reduces to a regular narrative, called The Concordance of Histories, the mythical, semi-mythi- cal, and authentic events of our history from Brute the Trojan to his own time; and Hall, a judge in the Sheriff's Court of the same city, under the title of the Union of the TVJO Noble and Illustrious Families of York and Lancastej', gives a history of England under those two houses, and so on down to the year 1532, which Grafton afterwards continued until the death of Henry VIII. These writings, though totally devoid of any pre- tensions to history in the genuine sense of the word, are valua- ble not only as storehouses of facts for modern narrators, but also as monuments of language and examples of the popular feel- ing of the time. It is from Hall that Lord Bacon derived the principal materials for his " History of Henry VII." 120. The ToxophilusGi ROGER ASCHAM (1515-1568), published in 1545, was written to revive the then decaying interest in the use of the bow, and is distinguished by quiet dignity of style and manliness of spirit. It is composed in the form of a dialogue between Philologus and Toxophilus. Eighteen years afterwards, when tutor to Queen Elizabeth, this same author brought out his more important work, The Schoolmaster, which is still valuable for the principles and rules of teaching expounded therein. One memorable passage, quoted repeatedly since, will long retain an interest from its connection with Lady Jane Grey. 64 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VI. 121. No literary monument of this age, and few of any age, wrought such momentous results to the nation and language as the first authorized version of the Scriptures, which was given to the English people in 1536. It then appeared under the edi- torship of MILES COVERDALE, subsequently Bishop of Exeter; but the entire work bears the impress of the mind of WILLIAM TYNDAL, who in 1526 published at Antwerp his translation of the New Testament, (28) afterwards added the Pentateuch, and finally, in the year of his martyrdom (1536), the Psalms and the Prophets, written either by himself or under his supervision. It is thought that no writer, not even Shakspeare himself, so deeply affected the character and form of the language as Tyndal. He contributed more than any other to fix in their present shape its grammatical structure, idiom, and diction. 122. During this period there took place in the northern king- dom the earliest original development of the national genius, whose productive energy contrasts honorably with the mental torpor that prevailed in the south. The impulse communicated by Barbour had carried Scottish literature to still nobler triumphs; and the writings of Henryson, Gawin Douglas, and Dunbar, first stamped upon it that distinct national impress which is yet uneffaced. Though Henryson's Testament of the Faire Creseide is a continuation of a work of Chaucer's, yet his exquisite pas- toral of Robin and Makyne. breathes the peculiar national spirit. The exploits of William Wallace gave a congenial subject to the muse of BLIND HARRY, otherwise HARRY THE MINSTREL, of whose life we have a very imperfect knowledge. GAWIN DOUG- LAS (1474-1522), Bishop of Dunkeld, prided himself on his free- dom from southern influences, and wrote in the very broadest form of his native dialect his translation of Virgil, as well as his Kinff Hart, and Palace of Honour, the diction of which is defaced by the unnecessary introduction of a great mass of French and Latin words, far beyond the proportion usual in contemporary English writings. 123. But the special glory of Scotland in the beginning of the sixteenth century is WILLIAM DUNBAR, a truly powerful and original genius, and the greatest Scotch poet before Burns. 1 1 is Thistle and Rose, which celebrates the marriage of James IV. of Scotland with Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., is a poem of great merit; and his Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins (19) possesses an almost fearful force and picturesqueness, A. D. 1490-1557. SIR DAVID LINDESAY. 65 To these might be added as favorable specimens of his genius The Design of the, Golden Terge, and the Lament for the Makars (poets). His strength and liveliness of imagination are beyond all praise ; but a degrading licentiousness both in thought and expression often pollutes his pages. 124. SIR DAVID LINDESAY (1490-1557), a name familiar to the readers of " Marmion," is the last conspicuous member of this group. {20} He, too, is remarkable rather for vigor than grace ; and his temperament naturally projected him into the department of satire, which in his most elaborate effort, the Satire of the Three Estates, takes a dramatic form. This is the earliest work of the kind in the northern dialect. Other com- positions of his axe The Monarchy, Squire Meldrum, and the Complaint of the Papingo ; which last is one of his most success- ful pieces. The effect of Sir David's works on the progress of the Reformation in Scotland is generally supposed to have been considerable, a circumstance which Scott finely glances at when he ascribes to him " that satiric rage, Which, bursting on the early stage, Branded the vices of the age, Arid broke the keys of Home." 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VII. CHAPTER VII. THE NON-DRAMATIC ELIZABETHAN POETS. 125. THE age of Elizabeth is characterized by features which cause it to stand alone in the literary history of the world. It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, of immense fertility and originality, and of high intellectual cultivation. The language had reached its highest perfection ; the study and imitation of ancient or foreign models had furnished a vast store of materials, images, and literary forms, which had not yet had time to become commonplace and over-worn. The poets and prose writers of this age, therefore, united the freshness and vigor of youth with the regularity and majesty of manhood. It will be our task to give a rapid sketch of some of its great works. 126. The first distinguished name is that of THOMAS SACK- VILLE, Lord Buckhurst (1536-1608), a kinsman of Queen Eliza- beth, who late in life filled the office of Lord High Treasurer. It was for his children that Ascham wrote the Schoolmaster. He projected, and himself commenced, a work entitled A Mir- rour for Magistrates, which was intended to contain a series of tragic examples of the vicissitudes of fortune, drawn from the annals of his own country, serving as lessons of virtue and warnings to future kings and statesmen. Sackville composed the Induction (introduction), and also the first legend or com- plaint, which relates the power and the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, victim of the tyrannical Richard III. The work passed through many forms, the earliest, of which the authors M-ere Richard Baldwin and George Ferrers, having appeared in 1559, and the latest in 1610. It was to the second, or edition of 1563, that Sackville contributed. The conception was not origi- nal, but was simply an application to English history of thai of Boccacio's De Casibus,' which both Chaucer and Lyd-atc had already followed. The Mirronr for Ma ^ht rate* is written in rhyme royal, and exhibits great occasional power of expres- A. D. 1552-1599. EDMUND SPENSEJR. 67 sion, and a remarkable force and compression of language, though the general tone is gloomy and somewhat monotonous. 127. The illustrious EDMUND SPENSER (i552?-i599), unques- tionably the greatest English poet intervening between Chaucer and Shakspeare, was born in London about 1552 a cadet of the illustrious family whose name he bore, though not endowed with fortune and was educated at the University of Cam- Bridge, where he undoubtedly acquired an amount of learning remarkable even in that age of solid and substantial studies, is supposed to have gained his first fame by the publication, in 1579, f the Shepherd's Calendar, a series of pastorals di- ided into twelve parts or months, in which, as in Virgil's Bucolics, under the guise of idyllic dialogues, his imaginary interlocutors discuss high questions of morality and state, and ?ay refined compliments to illustrious personages. These ec- oges, to which Spenser endeavored to give a national air by Dainting English scenery and the English climate, and by select- ing English names for his rustic persons, attracted to him the favor and patronage of the great. Through his friend, the earned Gabriel Harvey, whose mania for employing the an- cient classical metres, founded on quantity, in English verse, for some time infected the poet himself, he acquired the notice and ~avor of the accomplished Sidney; and it was at Penshurst, the fine mansion of the latter, that he is supposed to have revised the Shepherds' Calendar, which he dedicated, under the title of the Poefs Tear, to "Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, aoth of Chivalry and Poesy." By Sidney's uncle, Dudley Earl of Leicester, he was brought under the personal notice of Eliza- oeth herself, to whom he naturally sought to recommend him- self by all the refinements of literary homage ; but the poet, in his court career, inevitably exposed himself to the hostility of those who were the enemies of his protectors ; and has left us a gloomy picture of the miseries of courtly dependence. In 1580, however, on the nomination of Lord Grey de Wilton as Deputy of Ireland, Spenser accompanied him to that country as secre- tary; and six years afterwards received a grant of land not far from Cork, which had formed part of the confiscated domains of the Earls of Desmond. At Kilcolman Castle, where he re- sided for several years, with occasional visits to England, he composed the most important of his works, among which the Queen holds the first place. In October, 1598, the great 68 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VII. rebellion, called Tyrone's Insurrection, spread from the neigh- boring province of Ulster to Spenser's retreat. Kilcolman Cas- tle was attacked and burned by the insurgents. Completely ruined, and overwhelmed by the loss of a young child, which perished in the wreck of his house, the poet returned to London, where he died (in the greatest poverty it is said) in 1599; and was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, near the tomb of Chaucer. 128. Spenser's greatest work, The Fa^ry Queen, (38-42} the subject of which is chivalric, allegorical, narrative, and descrip- tive, was originally planned to consist of twelve books of moral adventures, each typifying the triumph of a Virtue, and couched under the form of an exploit of knight-errantry. The hero of the whole action was to be the mythical Prince Arthur, the type of perfect virtue in Spenser ; who is supposed to have become enamoured of the Fary Queen in a dream ; and on arriving at her court in Fairy-Land finds her holding a solemn feudal festi- val during twelve days. Here there is a beautiful lady for whose hand the twelve most distinguished knights are rivals ; and in order to settle their pretensions these twelve heroes undertake twelve separate adventures, which furnish the materials for the action. The First Book relates the expedition of the Red-Cross Knight, who is the allegorical representative of Holiness, while his mistress Una represents true Religion ; and the action of the knight's exploit shadows forth the triumph of Holiness over the enchantments and deceptions of Heresy. The Second Book recounts the adventures of Sir Guyon, or Temperance; the Third, those of Britomartis a female champion or Chastity. It must be remarked that each of these books is subdivided into twelve cantos; consequently the poem, even in the imperfect form under which we possess it, is extremely voluminous. The three first books were published separately in 1590, and dedicated to Elizabeth, who rewarded the delicate flattery which pervades innumerable allusions in the work with a pension of fifty pounds a year. After returning to Ireland, Spenser prosecuted his work; and in 1596 he gave to the world three more books, namely, the Fourth, containing the Legend of Cambell and Triamond, allegorizing Friendship; the Fifth, the Legend of Artegall, or Justice; and the Sixth, that of Sir Calidorc, or Courtesy. Thus half of the poet's original design was exe- cuted. Tradition asserts that the latter portion was completed, A. D. 1552-1599. EDMUND SPENSER. 69 and lost at sea ; but more probably the dreadful misfortunes of his later life prevented him from completing his design. This is perhaps no matter of regret, as the vigor, invention, and splendor of expression that glow so brightly in the first three books, manifestly decline in the fourth, fifth, and sixth. In this poem are united and harmonized three different elements which at first sight would, appear irreconcilable; for the skeleton or framework of the action is derived from the feudal or chivalric legends ; the ethical or moral sentiment from the lofty philoso- phy of Plato, combined with the most elevated Christian purity; and the form and coloring of the language and versification are saturated with the flowing grace and sensuous elegance of the great Italian poets of the Renaissance. The principal defects of the Fa(iry Queen, viewed as a whole, are a want of unity, involving a loss of interest in the story; and a monotony of character inseparable from a series of adventures which, though varied with inexhaustible fertility, are all, from their chivalric nature, fundamentally similar, being either combats between one knight and another, or between the hero of the moment and some supernatural being a monster, a dragon, or a wicked enchanter. Besides, hardly can any degree of genius long sus- tain the interest of an allegory; indeed those who read Spenser with the intensest delight are precisely those who entirely neg- lect the moral lessons typified in his allegory, and follow his recital of adventures as those of human beings, giving them- selves up to the mighty magic of his unequalled imagination. But Spenser, though extremely monotonous and tiresome to an ordinary reader, is the most enchanting of poets to him, who, endowed with a lively fancv, confines his attention to one or two at a time of his delicious episodes, descriptions, or impersona- tions. Moreover, many of his allegorical persons and adventures were intended to contain allusions to facts and individuals of Spenser's own time. Gloriana, the Faery Queen herself, and the beautiful huntress Belphcebe, (40} shadow forth Eliza- beth; Sir Artegall, the Knight of Justice, Lord Grey; and the adventures of the Red Cross Knight typify the history of the Anglican Church. 129. None of our poets is more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Spenser. Indeed the sweetness and flowingness of his verse is sometimes carried so far as to become cloying and enervated. The metre he employed, called after him the 70 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VII. Spenserian, consists of nine lines, and was formed by adding an Alexandrine to the eight-line stanza of Chaucer. As it is some- what complicated, and necessitates a frequent recurrence in each stanza of the same rhymes, namely, four of one ending, three of another, and two of a third, he was obliged to take consid- erable liberties with the orthography and accentuation of the English language. In doing this, he shows himself as unscru- pulous as masterly. By employing 'an immense mass of old Chaucerian words and provincialisms, nay even by occasionally inventing words himself, he furnishes his verse with an inex- haustible variety of language ; but at the same time the reader must remember that much of the vocabulary of the great poet was a dialect that never really existed. Its peculiarities have been less permanent than those of almost any other of our great writers. 130. The power of Spenser's genius consists in an unequalled richness of description, in the art of representing events and objects with an intensity that makes them visible and tangible. He describes to the eye, and communicates to the airy concep- tions of allegory, the splendor and the vivacity of visible objects. Among the most important of his other poetical writings are his Mother Ilnbbard's Tale; his DafiJi naida and Astrophcl, idyllic elegies on the death of Lady Howard and Sir Philip Sidney; all his Amorctti, or love-sonnets ; (43) and, above all, his beauti- ful Epithalamium, or Marriage-Song, on his own nuptials with the " fair Elizabeth," which is certainly one of the richest and chastest marriage-hymns to be found in the whole range of lit- erature. His single prose work, the View of the State of Ire- land, was not published until many years after his death. It is a faithful description of the manners and condition of the native Celtic race, which Spenser seems to have carefully studied, when a resident among them. 131. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586) exerted so powerful an influence on the intellectual spirit of the epoch, that our notice of the age would be incomplete without some allusion to his life, even did not the intrinsic merit of his writings give him a place among the best poets and prose- writers of the time, lie was born in 1554, and died at the age of thirty-two (October 7, 1586), of a wound received in the battle of Zutphen, fought to aid the Protestants of the Netherlands in their heroic struggle against the Spaniards. His contributions to the literature of his coun- A. D. 1562-1631. DANIEL. DRAYTON. 71 try consist of a small collection of Sonnets, (44) called Astrophel and Stella (his Stella being Penelope Devereux, Lady Rich), re- markable for their somewhat languid and refined elegance; and the prose romance, once regarded as a manual of courtesy and refined ingenuity, entitled The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, which was written at the request of his noble sister Mary, wife of Henry Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. A great portion of the work is chivalric, and the grace and animation with which the knightly pen of Sidney paints the shock of the tourney, and the noble warfare of the chase, is not surpassed by the luxurious elegance of his pastoral descriptions. In the style we see per- petual traces of that ingenious antithetical affectation called Euphuism, an account of which will be given afterwards; but the story, though occasionally tiresome and involved, is related with considerable skill, and abounds in happy thoughts and graceful expressions. Sidney wrote also a small tract entitled A Defence of Poesy, (55) in which he strives to show that the pleasures derivable from imaginative literature are powerful aids not only to the acquisition of knowledge, but to the cultivation of virtue. 132. SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619), who is said to have suc- ceeded Spenser as poet laureate, and who enjoyed among his contemporaries a respect merited not only by his talents but by his character, wrote, in the eight-line stanza, The History of the Civil Wars, a poem on the Civil Wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, in that peculiar style of poetical narrative and moral meditation which was at this time a favorite type among the literary men of England. (46) The language is exceedingly pure, limpid, and intelligible. The poem entitled Musophilus is an elaborate defence of learning, cast into the form of a dialogue. Many of Daniel's minor poems, as his Elegies, Epistles, Masques, and Songs, together with his contributions to the dramatic literature of the day, justify the reputation which he possessed. Good sense, dignity, and an equable flow of pure language and harmonious versification, are the qualities which posterity will acknowledge in his writings. 133. The longest and most celebrated productions of MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563-1631) were the topographical and descriptive poem entitled Polyolbion, (48) in thirty cantos or songs, The Barons' Wars, England's Hcroical Epistles, The Battle of Agincourt, The Muses' Elysium, and the delicious fancies of 72 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VII. The Court of Fairy. The first is a minute poetical itinerary of England and Wales, composed in the long-rhymed verse of twelve syllables, known as the Alexandrine, and is, both in design and execution, absolutely unique in literature. Drayton has described his country with the painful accuracy of the topog- rapher and the enthusiasm of a poet; and the Polyolbion will ever remain a most interesting monument of industry and taste. The Barons' Wars, a poem, describing the principal events of the unhappy reign of Edward II., is composed in the ottava rima, and with many merits partakes of the defects incident to such a work. The Heroical Epistles are imagined to be written by illustrious and unfortunate personages in English history to the objects of their love. They are therefore a kind of adaptation of the plan of Ovid to English annals. In the so-called Pastoral, too, Drayton attained great excellence ; in the series entitled The Muses' Elysium, and above all in the exquisite little mock-heroic of Nymphidia, (47) everything that is most graceful, delicate, quaint, and fantastic in that form of national superstition almost peculiar to Great Britain the fairy mythology, is ac- cumulated and touched with a consummate felicity. 134. The vigorous versatility of the age is well exemplified in SIR JOHN DAVIES (1570-1626), Chief Justice of Ireland, who has left two works of unusual merit and originality, though on widely different subjects. The subject of one of them, Nosce Teipsum, (40) is the proof of the immortality of the soul ; that of the other, entitled Orchestra, the art of dancing. The first is written in four-lined stanzas of heroic lines, afterwards made famous by Dryden's Annus Mirabilis ; and the second in a pecu- liarly-constructed seven-lined stanza. In both the language of Davies is pure and masculine, his versification smooth and melodious. 135. The manner, spirit, and in a sense even the metre of Spenser were copied with considerable success by the brothers GILES (1588-1623) and PHINEAS FLETCHER (1584-1650), cousins of Beaumont's colleague, who, along with WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645), author of Britannia's Pastorals, are usually classed as the immediate followers of the great Elizabethan poet. The first published in 1610 a poem entitled Chrisfs Victory and Triumph, written in an eight-line modification of the Spen- serian stanza, (53} and the second gave to the world in 1633 his strange production, the Purple Island, written in a seven- A. D. 1530-1631. GASCOYNE. DONNE. 73 line stanza of the same type. These works are chiefly remark- able for the extraordinary ingenuity with which the allegorical style of tl eir model is pursued under the most unfavorable con- ditions; in the latter especially, whose subject is the mind and body of man, this misapplication of ability is almost ludicrously conspicuous. Allegorical anatomy, however skilfully managed, is not attractive to an ordinary reader; nor is the canto on the intellectual and moral powers much more successful. Both seem, however, to have been well known to Milton ; and one scene of the " Paradise Regained," the first meeting of Christ with Satan, is said to have been taken from Giles's work. 13G. To this time is generally assigned the origin of English satire as a specific branch of poetical literature, with distinctly marked features of its own. Many passages, indeed, of social and personal invective are found in earlier writers ; Chaucer's pictures of the monastic orders and other classes of mankind abound in both open and implied censure ; both the spirit and matter of Langlande's work are almost wholly satirical ; but in neither of these authors is satire an essential characteristic, a certain infusion of it was inevitable to the task they undertook, but it was far from being a primary condition with either. Skelton was too ribaldrous, too full of mere venom and spite against individuals, to be ranked as anything more than a mere lampooner; and Surrey and Wyatt rather pointed out the way to this kind of composition than followed it themselves. The first English writer who distinctly calls himself a satirist is JOSEPH HALL (1574-1656), (118} and the general opinion of later critics has acquiesced in his assertion ; but the distinction has -also been claimed for GEORGE GASCOYNE (1530-1577), whose Steel Glass appeared in 1576, as well as for the better known JOHN DONNE (1573-1631), whose satires were composed as early as 1594, though not published until long afterwards. (50) 137. However this may be, in 1597, Joseph Hall, then fresh from Cambridge, published three books of biting- satires, which two years afterwards he followed up with three more of toothless satires : and to the collective work he gave the name of Virgide- tnarium, or a harvest of rods. (5J) These poems seem to fulfil all the conditions of satire ; they attack, with great energy and some humor, the prevailing follies and affectations both in litera- ture and social life. Though the numbers are often harsh and the meaning obscure, they possess enough of the spirit of Juvenal 74 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VII. to make them still readable. In later life Hall won greater dis- tinction still, more especially by his sermons; and as bishop of Norwich and champion of episcopacy, he ventured to grapple with Milton himself. John Donne will take his place more ap- propriately in a subsequent chapter (see p. 125). His satires, which were notorious for ruggedness and want of polish, were translated by Pope into the language of his own time, under the name of "The Satires of Dr. John Dnne, Dean of St. Paul's, versified." Many other writers of the day followed in the foot- steps of Hall, among whom the most noteworthy is JOHN MARSTON, author of the Scourge of Villainy. 138. No fact is more significant of the unparalleled literary activity of the Elizabethan Age than the almost incredible num- ber of smaller poets that it gave birth to. As many as two hundred have been reckoned who gave evidence in that time of a certain amount of skill in constructing verses. From among these, the rank and file of the army of letters, we may select as worthy of some notice WILLIAM WARNER (1558-1609), whose Albion's England, an historical poem in ballad metre, published in 1586, supplanted in popular esteem the " Mirrour for Ma- gistrates :" "silver-tongued" JOSHUA SYLVESTER (1563-1618), whose translation of Du Bartas was an early favorite with Mil- ton ; and ROBERT SOUTHWELL (1560-1595), executed as a Jesuit priest in 1595, author of the Burning Babe, which Ben Jonson admired so much. (52} 139. It is besides a special distinction of the same age that il produced, among many of a rather indifferent kind, one or two translations of unusual excellence. The Iliad and Odyssey of GEORGE CHAPMAN (1557-1634), which appeared at different times early in the seventeenth century, have won the enthusias- tic admiration of several generations of poets from Waller to Keats. "The earnestness and passion," says Charles Lamb, "which he has put into every part of these poems would be in- credible to a reader of more modern translations." High com- mendation, though of a different kind, must be awarded to EDWARD FAIRFAX'S translation of Tasso's "Jerusalem," pub- lished in 1600, and SIR JOHN HARINGTON'S version of the " Orlando Furioso," which appeared ninp years earlier. 140. But the grandest phenomenon of the epoch of Elizabeth is the Drama, and to it we shall now address ourselves. A. D. 1119. DAWN OF THE DRAMA. 75 CHAPTER VIII. THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. 141. SPAIN and England alone, among all the modern civil- ized nations, possess a theatrical literature independent in its origin, characteristic in its form, and reflecting faithfully the features, moral, social, and intellectual, of the people among which it arose ; the dramas of both countries being strongly romantic, though otherwise very dissimilar. It is possible to trace the first dawning of our national stage to a period not far removed from the Norman Conquest; for the custom of repre- senting, in a rude dramatic form, legends of the Lives of the Saints and striking episodes of Bible History existed as early as the twelfth century. To these the name of Mysteries or Miracle-plays was given ; of which the earliest on record is the Play of St. Catherine, written in French, and in all probability a rude dramatized picture of the miracles and martyrdom of that saint, which was represented at Dunstable in 1119. These per- formances were obviously an expedient employed by the clergy for communicating some elementary religious instruction to the people, and, by gratifying the curiosity of their rude hearers, extending and strengthening the influence of the Church. At first these plays were composed and acted by monks ; the ca- thedral was transformed for the nonce into a theatre, the stage was a species of graduated platform in three divisions repre- senting Heaven, Earth, and Hell rising one over the other, and the costumes were furnished from the vestry of the church. On many of the high religious festivals the personage or event then commemorated was represented in a visible form, with such details as Scripture, legend, or the imagination of the author, could supply; nor did the simple faith of the monkish dramatists and their audience see any impropriety in the intro- duction of the most supernatural beings, the persons of thr Trinity, angels, devils, saints, and martyrs. It was absolutely necessary that some comic element should be introduced to 76 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. enliven the graver scenes ; and this was supplied by represent- ing the wicked personages, whether human or spiritual, of the drama as placed in ludicrous situations ; thus the Devil generally played the part of the clown or jester, and was exhibited in a light half terrific and half farcical ; and the modern puppet-play of Punch, with his struggles with the Devil, is unquestionably a direct tradition handed down from these ancient miracles in which the Evil One was alternately the conqueror and the victim of the human Buffoon, Jester, or Vice, as he was called. 142. Some idea may be formed of these ancient religious dramas from the titles of some of them which have been pre- served. The Creation of the World, the Fall of Man, the story of Cain and Abel, the Crucifixion of Our Lord, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Deluge, besides an infinite multitude of sub- jects taken from the lives and miracles of the saints ; such were their materials. They are generally written in mixed prose and verse; and, though abounding in anachronisms and absurdities both of character and dialogue, they sometimes contain passages of simple and natural pathos, and sometimes scenes of genuine, if not very delicate, humor. Thus, in the Deluge, a comic scene is produced by the refusal of Noah's wife to enter the Ark, and by the beating which justly terminates her resistance and scold- ing ; whilst, on the other hand, a mystery on the subject of the Sacrifice of Isaac, contains a dialogue of much pathos and beauty between Abraham and his son. The oldest known manuscript of a miracle-play in English is that of the Harrowing of Hell, i. e. the Conquering of Hell by Christ, believed to have been written about 1350; but The Play of the Blessed Sacrament, which is as old at least as the year 1470, is more artistically con- structed than any other of the kind. 143. These Mysteries, once the only form of dramatic repre- sentation, continued to be popular from the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century, when they were supplanted by another kind of representation, called a Morality. In a sense, indeed, the Miracle-play is not quite extinct even yet; in the retired val- leys of Catholic Switzerland, in the Tyrol, and in some little- visited districts of Germany, the peasants still annually perform dramatic spectacles representing episodes in the life of Christ. The subjects of these new dramas, which became popular from about the beginning of the fifteenth century, instead of being purely religious, were moral, as their name implies ; and the A. D. 1119-1470. MIRACLE PLATS. 77 ethical lessons were conveyed by an action and dramatis per- sona of an abstract or allegorical kind. Thus, instead of the Deity and his angels, the Saints, the Patriarchs, and the char- acters of the Old and New Testament', the persons who figure in the Moralities are Every-Man, a general type or expression of humanity Lusty Juventus, who represents the follies and weaknesses of youth Good Counsel, Repentance, Gluttony, Pride, Avarice, and the like. The action was in general exceed- ingly simple, and the tone grave and doctrinal, though of course the same necessity existed as before for the introduction of comic scenes. The Devil was therefore retained ; and his battles and scoldings with a new character, the Vice, furnished forth many " a fit of mirth." The oldest English Moral-play now extant is The Castle of Perseverance, which was written about 1450. It is a sort of dramatic allegory of human life, representing the many contending influences that surround man in his way through the world. Another, called Lusty Juventus, contains a vivid and even humorous picture of the extravagance and de- bauchery of a young heir, surrounded by companions, the Vir- tues and the Vices; ending with a demonstration of the inevi- table misery and punishment which follow a departure from the path of virtue and religion. The Morality had a strong tendency to partake of the character of the court masque, in which the Elements, the Virtues, the Vices, or the various reigns of nature, were introduced either to convey some physical or philosophical instruction in the guise of allegory, or to compliment a king or great personage on a festival occasion ; of which class Skelton's masque of Magnificence is an excellent specimen. 144. Springing from the Moralities, and bearing some general resemblance to them, though exhibiting a still nearer approach to the regular drama, are the Interludes, a class of compositions in dialogue, much shorter in extent and more merry and farcical in subject; which were exceedingly fashionable about the time when the great controversy was raging between the Catholic church and the Reformed religion in England. A prolific author of these grotesque and merry pieces was JOHN HEYWOOD, a man of learning and accomplishment, who seems to have performed the duties of a sort of jester at the court of Henry VIII. His Four Ps, his Johan, Tyb, and Sir Jhan, are very creditable productions, and exhibit powers of humor far above the ordi- nary. 78 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. 145. The national taste for dramatic entertainments was still further fostered by those pageants which were so often employed to gratify the vanity of citizens, or to compliment an illustrious . visitor. These either simply consisted of the exhibition, on some lofty platform, in the porch or churchyard of a cathedral, in the Town Hall or over the city gate, of a number of figures suitably dressed, or which accompanied their action with poetical decla- mation and music; and necessarily partook in all the changes of taste which characterized the age : the Prophets and Saints who welcomed the royal stranger in the thirteenth century with barbarous Latin hymns were gradually supplanted by the Virtues and allegorical qualities ; and these in their turn, when the Re- naissance had disseminated a universal passion for classical imagery, made way for the Cupids, the Muses, and other clas- sical personages, whose influence has continued almost to the literature of our own time. Such spectacles were of course fre- quently exhibited at the Universities, where, partly from the multitude of nations composing the body of the students, who required some common language which they could all under- stand, and partly for more obvious reasons, the Latin tongue was invariably employed. Soon afterwards the fashion became general of producing Latin plays at the Universities and Inns of Court; and a large number of pieces, generally written upon the models of Terence and Seneca, were produced and repre- sented, especially in the great outbreak of revolt against the au- thority of scholasticism which preceded the Reformation. These dramas, however, do not appear to have exercised any appre- ciable influence on the growth of the English stage. 14G. We have now traced the progress of the Dramatic art from its first rude infancy in England; and have seen how every step of that advance removed it farther and farther from a purely religious, and brought it closer and closer to a profane charac- ter. The last step of the progress was the creation of what we now understand under the term dramatic, viz., the scenic repre- sentation, by means of the action and dialogue of human per- sonages, of some event of history or social life. As in the first appearance of this, the most perfect form which the art could attain, the influence of the great models of ancient literature must have been very powerful, dramatic compositions class themselves, by the very nature of the case, into the two great categories of Tragedy and Comedy ; and even borrow from the A. D. 1495-1563. JOHN BALE. 79 classical models details of an unessential kind, as, for example, the use of the Chorus, which, originally consisting of a numer- ous body of performers, was gradually reduced, though its name and functions were retained to a certain degree by the old Eng- lish playwrights, to a single individual, as in several of Shak- speare's dramas. It was about the middle of the sixteenth century that a considerable activity of creation was first perceptible in this department. JOHN BALE (1495-1563), the author of many semi-polemical plays, partaking in some measure of the charac- ter of the Mystery, the Morality, and the Interlude, set the ex- ample of extracting materials for rude historical dramas from the chronicles of his native country. His drama of King John occupies an intermediate place between the Moralities and his- torical plays. But the earliest composition in our language that possesses all the requisites of a regular tragedy is the play of Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrcx, written by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (the principal writer in the " Mirror for Magis- trates "), and Thomas Norton, and acted in 1562 for the enter- tainment of Queen Elizabeth by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. Its subject is borrowed from the old half-mythological Chronicles of Britain ; but the principal event is similar to the story of Eteocles and Polynices; and the treatment exhibits strong marks of classic imitation. The dialogue of Gorboduc is in blank verse, which is regular and carefully constructed ; but it is totally destitute of variety of pause, and consequently is a most insufficient vehicle for dramatic dialogue. The sentence almost invariably terminates with the line; and the effect of the whole is insupportably formal and heavy; the action also is oppressively tragic, being a monotonous, dismal succession of slaughters, ending with the desolation of an entire kingdom. Another work of a similar character is Damon and Pythias, acted before the Queen at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1566. This play, which is in rhyme, is a mixture of tragedv and comedy. Its author was RICHARD EDWARDS, the compiler of the miscel- lany called The Paradise of Dainty Devices, He also wrote Palamon and Arcite, the beautiful story so inimitably treated by Chaucer in The Knighfs Tale, and afterwards in Beaumont and Fletcher's romantic play The Two Noble Kinsmen.*- In 1578 was acted Promos and Cassandra, written by GEORGE * It is next to certain that a large portion of this play came from Shakspcare's pen. '80 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. WHETSTONE, chiefly curious as having furnished the subject of Shakspeare's Measure for Measure. All these plays are marked by a general similarity of style and treatment, and belong to about the same period. 147. In the department of Comedy the first English works \vhich made their appearance were very little anterior to the above pieces, but offer a most striking contrast in their tone and treatment. The earliest work of this kind in the language was Ralph Roys- ter Doystcr, acted in 1551, and written by NICHOLAS UDALL, for a long time Master of Eton College. This was followed, about fourteen years later, by Gammer Gurton's Needle, composed by JOHN STILL, afterwards Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had previously been Master of St. John's and Trinity Colleges in Cambridge ; by the students of which society it was probably acted. Both these works are highly curious and interesting, .not only as being the oldest specimens of the class of literature to which they belong, but in some measure from their intrinsic merit. The action of the former comedy, which is unquestion- ably superior to the other, takes place in London ; and the prin- cipal characters are a rich and pretty widow, her lover, and an insuppressible suitor, the foolish personage who gives the title to the play. This ridiculous pretender to gayety and love is betrayed into all sorts of absurd and humiliating scrapes ; and the piece ends with the return of the favored lover from a voyage which he had undertaken in a momentary pique. The manners represented are those of the middle class of the period ; and the picture given of London citizen life in the middle of the six- teenth century is curious, animated, and natural. The language is lively; and the dialogue is carried on in a sort of loose dog- gerel rhyme, very well adapted to represent comic conversation. In general the intrigue of this drama is deserving of approba- tion ; the plot is well imagined, and the reader's curiosity well kept alive. Gammer Gurton's Needle is a composition of a much lower and more farcical order. The scene is laid in the hum- blest rustic life, and all the dramatis pcrsonce belong to the uneducated class. The principal action of the comedy is the sudden loss of a needle with which Gammer {Good Mother} Gurton has been mending the inexpressibles of her man Hodge, a loss comparatively serious when needles were rare and costly. The whole intrigue consists in the search instituted after this un- fortunate little implement, which is at last discovered by Hodge A. D. 1551-1576. FIRST ENGLISH THEATRE. 81 himself, on suddenly sitting down, sticking in the garment which Gammer Gurton had been repairing. 148. As yet there were neither regular theatres nor recognized professional actors, the place of the first being supplied by town- halls, court-yards of inns, cock-pits, noblemen's dining-halls, and other places ; that of the second by amateurs of various kinds. The Court plays were frequently represented by the children of the royal chapel, and placed, as the dramatic profession in gen- eral was for a long time, under the peculiar supervision of the Office of the Revels, which was obliged also to exercise the du- ties of a dramatic censor. Soon, however, bodies of actors, singers, tumblers, &c., calling themselves the servants of some nobleman whose livery they wore, were formed; and were fre- quently in the habit of wandering about the country, performing wherever they could find an audience, generally in some one of the above-mentioned places. Protected by the letters-patent of the livery of their master against the severe laws which qualified strollers as vagabonds, they generally began their proceedings by begging the countenance and protection of the authorities; and the accounts of the ancient municipal bodies, and the house- hold registers of the great families of former times, abound in entries of permissions given to such strolling parties of actors, tumblers, and musicians, and of sums granted to them in recom- pense of their exertions. By far the most interesting of these entries is that found in the municipal records of Stratford-upon- Avon under the year 1569, from which we learn that in this, the year of office of Shakspeare's father, the players visited Stratford for the first time ; and gave their performances, in all proba- bility, under the patronage of the High-bailiff of the town. 149. At length, in the year 1576, James Burbadge, a Warwick- shire man, under the powerful patronage of the Earl of Leices- ter, built in the precincts of the Blackfriars, where Printing-house Square now stands, the earliest English theatre. This was fol- lowed next year by the Curtain, which owed its existence to the same enterprising spirit; and these adventures proved so suc- cessful, that at one time during this period London and its suburbs contained at least twelve different theatres, of various degrees of size and convenience. Of these the most celebrated was undoubtedly the Globe, for at that time each playhouse had its sign, which belonged to the same company as "The Thea- tre," by which name Burbadge's original playhouse at Black- 6 82 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. friars was known. It was called the Globe, from its sign bearing the effigy of Atlas supporting the globe, with the motto " Totus Mxindus agit Histrionem," and was situated on the Bankside in Southwark, near the Surrey extremity of London Bridge. In fact, the great majority of the London theatres was on the south- ern or Surrey bank of the Thames, in order to be out of the juris- diction of the municipality of the City, which, being strongly infected with the gloomy doctrines of Puritanism, carried on against the players and the playhouses a constant war. Some of these theatres were cockpits or arenas for bull-baiting and bear-baiting (the word fit still preserves the memory of the former of these) ; and they were all very poor and squalid, as compared with the magnificent theatres of the present day, re- taining in their form and arrangement many traces of the ancient model the inn-yard. Most of the theatres were entirely uncovered,* excepting over the stage, where a thatched roof pro- tected the actors from the weather; and this thatched roof was, in 1613, the cause of the total destruction^ the Globe, in conse- quence of the wadding of a chamber, or small cannon, lodging in it, fired during the representation of Shakspeare's Henry VIII. The boxes or rooms, as they were then styled, were of course ar- ranged nearly as in the present day; but the musicians, instead of being placed, as now, in the orchestra, or place between the pit and the stage, were established in a lofty gallery over the scene. 150. The most remarkable peculiarities of the ancient English theatres were the total absence of painted or movable scenery, and the necessity that female parts should be performed by men or boys, actresses being as yet unknown. Both these improve- ments were introduced soon after the Restoration, when the golden prime of the stage had passed away for ever. A few traverses, or screens of cloth or tapestry, gave the actors the opportunity of making their exits and entrances; a placard, bearing the name of Rome, Athens, London, or Florence, as the case might be, intimated to the audience the place of action. Besides these they employed certain typical articles of furniture : a bed on the stage suggested a bedroom ; a table covered with * The Blucltfriars Theatre, which was much smaller than the Globe, was entirely roofed over; .the company were in the habit of performing there in the winter, whereas during the summer thair representations were given on the liaukside, the iuclcmeiicy of the weather being then lesi 'lacouveiiicut. A. D. L'576-1642. THE DRAMA. 83 tankards, a tavern ; a gilded chair surmounted by a canopy, and called a state, a palace ; an altar, a church ; and the like. A permanent wooden construction, like a scaffold or a high wall, erected at the back of the stage, represented an infinity of ob- jects according to the requirements of the piece, such as the wall of a castle or besieged city, the outside of a house, as when a dialogue is to take place between one person at a window and another on the exterior ; and it enabled one of the dramatis per- soiHE to overhear others without being himself seen. 151. In one department, however, of the stage-economy the companies of the early theatre were singularly lavish that of costume, which was invariably costly and splendid. They differed from the present usage in employing the style of dress of the time (wit-h the exception of the Prologue, who appeared in the long flowing robe of the middle ages), but this being highly picturesque did not at all impair the effect, or mar the illusion, But this employment of the contemporary costume in plays whose action was supposed to take place in Greece, Rome, or Persia, naturally led into amazing anachronisms and absur- dities, such as arming the assassins of Caesar with Spanish rapiers, or furnishing Carthaginian senators with watches; which after all did not strike in a very offensive manner the mixed and uncritical spectators of those times. Certain conven- tional attributes were always associated with particular super- natural personages, such as angels, devils, ghosts, and so on. Thus a " roobe for to goo invisibell" is one of the items in an old list of properties ; and in all probability the spectral armor of the Ghost in Hamlet was to be found in the wardrobe of the ancient theatres. The curtain is supposed to have opened per- pendicularly in the middle; and besides this principal curtain there seem to have been others occasionally drawn so as to divide the stage into several apartments, and withdrawn to exhibit one of the characters as in a tent or closet. 152. Though several of the companies of actors were under the immediate patronage of the sovereign, of different members of the royal family, and other great personages of the realm, it was long before any of our sovereigns deigned to witness their performances in the theatres. But their patronage protected them against interlopers and rivals, and above all against the implacable hostility of the Puritanical municipality of London. And they were frequently summoned to furnish entertainment to their patrons at Court. 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. 153. The performance, which generally began at three o'clock in the afternoon, was announced by three flourishes of a trumpet, and commenced with the declamation of the Prologue, at first by the author himself arrayed in the poetical costume of the middle ages, and subsequently by a proxy, who assumed the same garb. Black drapery hung round the stage intimated the performance of a tragedy ; and rushes were strewn over the floor to enable the fine gentlemen who patronized the company to take their seats upon it without fear of the consequences. Dan- cing and singing took place between the acts ; and, as a rule, a jig wound up the entertainment. This was a kind of comic ballad, professedly an improvisation, sung by a clown, with accompaniment of tabor and pipe and farcical dancing. A flag remained floating at the summit of the theatre during the entire performance, 154. The social position of an actor and playwright, even at the end of the sixteenth century, was far from being an enviable one; it was still regarded by many as scarcely a shade removed above that of the " rogues and vagabonds" of former genera- tions ; but this drawback seems to have been fully compensated for by its extraordinary profits. That these were unusually great is proved not only by historical evidence, such as the fre- quent allusions made by the over-rigid preachers and moralists of the day to the pride, luxury, and magnificence in dress of the successful performers, but also by the rapidity with which many of them, as Shakspeare, Burbadge, and Alleyn, amassed con- siderable fortunes. 155. Notwithstanding this social discredit that in these times attached to the actor's profession, the Drama had reached such popularity, and the employment was so lucrative, that it soon became the common receptacle of irregular genius in search of a livelihood. Indeed nothing is more remarkable than the mar- vellously rapid growth of this department of our literature, which indeed passed from infancy to manhood in a single genera- tion. Not much more than twenty years after the appearance of the first rude tragedy, our Theatre entered upon the most glorious period of its history, bursting forth into a majesty and strength without parallel perhaps in the literature of any coun- try. This was mainly the work of a small band of poets, seven in number, whose careers all began about the same time, and who were in all essential respects the creators of the English A. D. 1576-1642. THE DRAMA. 85 stage, Most of them were men of liberal education, but of dis- solute lives, whom the new profession naturally attracted into its ranks ; one or two left rustic homes to seek their fortunes in the great world of London, and were lured by the prospect of swift gain into the same employment; and all possessed abilities of a very high order, though but one of the very highest. This one, WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE, is the giant of the group, beside whom the others dwindle into comparative insignificance, and but for whom they would have sunk into utter oblivion. It is usual indeed to call these men CHAPMAN, LYLY, PEELE, GREENE, MARLOWE, and KYD predecessors of Shakspeare, but as none of them preceded him by more than a year or two, and some actually followed him, whilst all were in a sense fellow- workers with him for a time, it would seem more proper to style them the contemporaries of his early period. But intemperance and debauchery carried off many of them before their great associ- ate reached the maturity of his powers, and hence they are generally placed earlier in the roll of our dramatists, 156. Perhaps the most remarkable peculiarity of the dramatic profession at this period was the frequent combination, in one and the same person, of the qualities of player and dramatic author. This circumstance obviously exerted a mighty influence in modifying the dramatic productions of the time ; and it pow- erfully contributed to give to them that strong and individual character which renders them so inimitable. A dramatic writer, however great his genius, unacquainted practically with the mechanism of the stage, will frequently fail in giving to his work that directness and vivacity, that dramatic effect which is the essential element of popular success. Thus in the French drama Moliere succeeded where Racine and Corneille failed utterly; himself a skilful actor, as well as an unequalled painter of comic character, he was able to give to his pieces the element of scenic effect; an element in which the others, despite their perhaps higher literary qualities, having no practical acquaint- ance with the stage, were entirely deficient. Though not an unmixed benefit coarseness, buffoonery, bombast, and bad taste, were perhaps unavoidable under the circumstances at the same time it is the reason why the writings of these actor- authors invariably possess intense dramatic interest, and an effectiveness which literary merit alone could never give. The careers of these men, at least in their commencements and gen- 86 ENGLISH LITERATU11E. CHAP. VIII. eral outlines, were the same. They attached themselves, in the double quality of actors and poets, to one of the numerous companies then existing; and after a short apprenticeship passed in rewriting and rearranging plays already exhibited to the pub- lic, they gradually rose to original works written either alone or in partnership with some brother playwright. There being no dramatic copyright at this time, the troops of actors had the very strongest motive for taking every precaution that their pieces should not be printed, publication instantly annihilating their monopoly and allowing rival companies to profit by their labors ; and this is the reason why comparatively so few of the dramas of this period, in spite of their unequalled merit and their great popularity, were committed to the press during the lives at least of their authors. It also explains the singularly careless execu- tion of such copies as w r ere printed, these having been given to the public in many cases surreptitiously, and in direct contraven- tion to the wishes and interests of the author. 157. A -short sketch of the subordinate members of this remarkable group of playwrights will now be given. JOHN LYLY (1553-1601 ?) composed several court plays and pageants, of which most were written upon classical, or rather mythological subjects, as the story of Endymion, Sappho and Phaon, and Alexander and Campaspe. He has a rich and fantastic imagi- nation ; and his writings exhibit genius and elegance, though strongly tinctured with a peculiar kind of affectation with which he infected the language of the Court, the aristocracy, and even to a considerable degree literature itself, till it fell under the ridicule of Shakspeare. This consisted in a kind of_exag- gerated vivacity of imagery and expression ; the remotest and most unexpected analogies were sought for, and crowded into every sentence. The reader may form some notion of this mode of writing (which was called Euphuism, from Lyly's once fashionable book which appeared in two parts, the first entitled EupJiues: The Anatomy of Wit, the second Euphues and Ins England}, by consulting the caricature of it which Scott has introduced in the character of the courtier Sir Piercy Shafton in The Monastery. The first part of the Euphues appeared in 1578 or 1579. Lyly was a man of considerable classical ac- quirements, and had been educated at Oxford. His lyrics are extremely graceful and harmonious ; and even as a playwright his merits are rather lyrical than dramatic. A.D. 1552-1598. KTD. GREENE. MARLOWE. 87 158. GEORGE PEELE (1552-1598?), like Lyly, had received a liberal education at Oxford. He was one of Shakspeare's fel- low-actors and fellow-shareholders in the Blackfriars Theatre. His earliest work, The Arraignment of Part's, was printed anonymously in 1584. His inost celebrated dramatic works were the David and Bethsabe, and Absalom, in which there are great richness and beauty of language, and occasional indica- tions of a high order of pathetic and elevated emotion. His Edward I, is supposed to be our first historical play, and is, though monotonous, declamatory, and stiff, in some sense the forerunner of Richard II. andflenry V. 159. THOMAS KYD, the " sporting Kyd " of Ben Jonson, lived about the same time, and was possibly the author of the famous play called Jeronimo, to which, in consequence of the many recastings it received, so many authors have been ascribed. The Spanish Tragedy, which is a continuation of Jeronimo, was undoubtedly his ; and this fact is now believed to be fatal to his claim to the authorship of the more remarkable work. 100. ROBERT GREENE (1560-1592) was a Cambridge man, and the author of a multitude of tracts and pamphlets on the most mis- cellaneous subjects. Sometimes they were tales, often translated or expanded from the Italian novelists; sometimes amusing ex- posures of the various arts of cony-catching, i. e., cheating anc- swindling, practised at that time in London, and in which, it is to be feared, Greene was personally not unversed ; sometimes moral confessions, like the Groats^vorth of Wit, or Never too Late, purporting to be a warning to others against the con- sequences of unbridled passions. The only dramatic work we need specify of Greene's was George-a- Green, the legend of an old English popular hero, recounted with much occasional vivacity and humor. 161. But by far the most powerful genius among them was CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593), who was born at Canter- bury in 1564. On leaving the University of Cambridge he joined a troop of actors, among whom he was remarkable for a vice and debauchery even exceeding professional limits; and he was strongly suspected by his contemporaries of being an Atheist. His career was as short as it was disgraceful : he was stabbed in the head with his own dagger, which he had drawn in a disrepu- table scuffle with a disreputable antagonist, in a disreputable 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. VIII. place ; and he died of this wound at the age of thirty. His works are not numerous; but they are strongly distinguished from those of preceding and contemporary dramatists by an air of astonishing power, energy, and elevation an elevation, it is true, which is sometimes exaggerated into bombast, and an energy which occasionally degenerates into extravagance. His first work was the tragedy of Tamburlaine ; and the rants of the declamation in this piece furnished rich materials for satire and caricature; but in spite of this bombast the piece contains many passages of great power and beauty. Marlowe's best work is iricontestably the drama of Faustus, (71} founded upon the very same popular legend which Goethe adopted as the groundwork of his tragedy; but the point of view taken by Marlowe is far simpler than that of Goethe; and though the German poet's work is on the whole vastly superior, there is certainly no pas- sage in the tragedy of Goethe in which terror, despair, and re- morse are painted with such a powerful hand as the great closing scene of Marlowe's piece, when Faustus, after the twenty-four years of sensual pleasure which were stipulated for in his pact with the Evil One, is waiting for the inevitable arrival of the Fiend to claim his bargain. The tragedy of the Jew of Malta, though inferior to Fatistus, is characterized by similar merits and defects. The hero, Barabas, is the type of the Jew as he appeared to the rude and bigoted imaginations of the fifteenth century a monster half terrific, half ridiculous, impossibly rich, inconceivably bloodthirsty, cunning, and revengeful, the bug- bear of an age of ignorance and persecution. The intense ex- pression of his rage, however, his triumph and his despair, give occasion for many noble bursts of Marlowe's powerful declama- tion. The tragedy of Edward II. , (70) which was the last of this great poet's works, shows that in some departments of his art, and particularly in that of moving terror and pity, he might, had he lived, have become no insignificant rival of Shakspeare himself. The scene of the assassination of the unhappy king is worked up to a very lofty pitch of tragic pathos. 162. Marlowe is honorably known in other departments of poetry also. His two Sestiads of Hero and Leander, and his translation of the first book of Lucan, are respectively written in the heroic couplet and in blank verse, and are not without merit ; whilst his charming poem of The Passionate Shepherd A. D. 1557-1634. GEORGE CHAPMAN. 89 had the rare distinction of being quoted by Shakspeare, and of being answered in "The Nymph's Reply" by Sir Walter Ra- leigh. 1G3. The merits of GEORGE CHAPMAN (1557-1634) as a trans- lator* have so entirely eclipsed his dramatic fame, that but few of his plays are now ever referred to. His Bussy d'Amboise is perhaps the best known of these. 90 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IX. CHAPTER IX. SHAKSPEARE. 1G4. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE (1564-1616) was born, probably on the 23d of April, 1564, in the small county town of Stratford- on-Avon, Warwickshire, and was baptized on the 26th of the same month. His father, John Shakspeare, in all probability a fellmonger, wool-dealer, and glover, had married in 1557 an heiress of ancient and even knightly descent, Isabella Arden or Arderne. whose family had figured in the courtly and warlike annals of preceding reigns ; and thus in the veins of the great poet of humanity ran blood derived from both the aristocratic and popular portions of the community. Isabella Arderne had brought her husband in dowry a small freehold property; but this acquisition seems to have tempted him to engage, without experience, in agricultural pursuits, which ended disastrously in his being obliged at different times to mortgage and sell, not only his farm, bvit even one of the houses in Stratford of which he had been owner. He at last retained nothing save that small, but now venerable dwelling, consecrated to all future ages by being the spot where the greatest of poets first saw the light. That John Shakspeare had been originally in flourishing cir- cumstances is amply proved by his having long been one of the Aldermen of Stratford, and his having served the office of Bailiff or Mayor in 1569. His distresses appear to have become severe in 1579; an< ^ ne was unable to extricate himself from his manifold embarrassments, until his son had raised himself to a position of competence, and even of affluence. 1G5. That William Shakspeare could have derived even the most elementary instruction from his parents is impossible ; for we know that neither John nor Isabella Shakspeare could wj;ite an accomplishment, however, which, it should be remarked, was comparatively rare in Elizabeth's reign. But there existed at that time, and there exists at the present day, in the borough of Stratford, one of those endowed "free grammar-schools" in A. D. 1564-1G16. SHAKSPEAEE. 91 which provision is always, made for the children of the burgesses of the town ; and it is inconceivable that John Shakspeare, Alderman and Past Bailiff as he was, should' have neglected to avail himself of so useful a privilege. This circumstance, coupled with the extensive though irregular reading of which his works give evidence, and with the vague tradition that he had been " in his youth a schoolmaster in the country," renders it more than probable that the young poet enjoyed a higher de- gree of culture than some would give him credit for. 1G6. The most celebrated and romantic of the legends con- nected with his early life is that which represents his youth as wild and irregular; and in particular recounts his deer-stealing expedition, in company with other riotous young fellows, to Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlcote, near Stratford. For this escapade he is said to have been seized, brought before the in- dignant justice of the peace, and treated with so much severity by Sir Thomas, that he revenged himself by affixing a doggerel pasquinade to the gates of Charlcote. At this the wrath of the magistrate is said to have blazed so high that Shakspeare was obliged to escape to London ; where, continues the legend, the young poet was reduced to earn his livelihood by holding horses at the doors of the theatres, until, "his pleasant wit" attracting the notice of the actors, he ultimately obtained access " behind the scenes," and by degrees became a celebrated actor and valu- able dramatic author. But, though the deer-stealing story may very possibly be not altogether devoid of foundation, his leaving Stratford and embracing the theatrical career are to be explained in a different and much less improbable manner. It is quite certain that he left his native town in 1586, at the age of twenty- t\vo ; but the motive for this step was in all probability supplied by his marriage, contracted in 1582, when he was only eighteen, with Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a small farmer, little above the rank of a laboring man, who resided at the hamlet of Shottery, about two miles from Stratford. Anne Hathaway was seven years and a half older than her boy-husband ; and tha marriage appears to have been pressed on with eager haste, probably by the relatives of the bride. Indeed the whole of this important episode in the poet's life bears strong trace of a not over-reputable family mystery. The fruits of this union were, first a daughter Susanna, the poet's favorite child, born in 1583, and in the following year twins, Judith and Hamnet. The lat- 92 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IX. ter, the poet's only son, died at twelve years of age ; his two daughters survived him. After these he had no more children ; and there are several facts which seem to point to the conclusion that the married life of the poet was not marked b*y that love and confidence which are the usual result of well-considered and well-assorted unions. During the long period of his residence in London, his wife seems to have never resided with him; bit- ter allusion to marriages like his own are frequent in his works; and in his will he leaves her only " his second-best bed, with furniture," the significance of which slighting bequest, how- ever, is somewhat diminished by the fact that as his property was chiefly freehold, she was entitled to dower. 167. Concerning the boyhood and youth of the great painter of nature and of man we know little or nothing. It is not im- probable that at one period of his youth he had been placed in the office of some country practitioner of the law : in all his works he shows an extraordinary knowledge of the technical language of that profession, and frequently draws his illustra- tions from its vocabulary. Besides, such terms as he employs he almost always employs correctly ; which would hardly be possible but to one who had been professionally versed in them. 168. However this may be, at the age of twenty-two, Shak- speare, now the father of three children, and without means of support, determined upon the great step of leaving Stratford altogether, and embarking on the wide ocean of London theat- rical life. The motives that induced him to adopt this profession are not far to seek. The companies of actors were always glad to enlist among them such men of ready genius as could render themselves useful as performers and dramatists ; they had often visited Stratford in their summer peregrinations; and the great- est tragic actor of that day, Richard Burbadge, was a War- wickshire man, whilst Thomas Greene, a distinguished member of the troop of the Globe, then the first theatre in London, was a native of Stratford. With this company, therefore, it was natural for the young adventurer to throw in his lot. Like other young men of that time, he rendered himself useful to his company in the double capacity of actor and arranger of pieces ; and his professional career differed from thatof Marlowe, Jonson, and others, in no respect save in the industry and success with which he pursued it, and the prudence with which he accumu- lated its pecuniary results. He began, in all probability, by A. D. 1564-1616. SHAESPEARE. 93 adapting old plays to the exigencies of his theatre, and thus ac- quired that consummate knowledge of stage effect which distin- guished him, and which first struck out the spark of that inimitable dramatic genius which places him above all other poets in the world. His professional career continued from 1586 to his retirement, which probably took place in 1611, a period of twenty-five years, embracing the splendor of his youth and the vigor of his manhood. 169. Though many attempts have been made to establish the dates and sequence of Shakspeare's thirty-seven plays, none of them even approaches to a satisfactory chronology of his dra- matic history. The notices of the first performances, the scanty historical allusions, the order of their sequence in the first com- plete edition of the plays, that of 1623, and internal evidence itself, founded upon shades of style and a higher or lower degree of artistic perfection in treatment, are alike inadequate to the solution of the great problem. From the employment of all these methods combined we may indeed sometimes class the plays of Shakspeare into certain great, but not very accurately- marked periods ; but we can never hope to attain anything like an exact chronolgical order. During the whole of his literary career our great dramatic master-workman in all likelihood continued to adapt and arrange old plays as well as to compose original pieces ; which consideration will explain the extraordinary difference in point of merit, literary as well as theatrical, between such speci- mens of the most consummate perfection both in style and con- struction as Hamlet (81, 82~) and Othello, and such strikingly inferior compositions as Titus Andronicus and parts of Henry VI. 170. The company to which Shakspeare belonged possessed two theatres, the Globe in Southwark, and The Theatre in Blackfriars, of which an account has already been given (see p. Si). This company was undoubtedly the most respectable as well as the most prosperons of the then theatres ; and partly by prudently avoiding to give offence by political allusion, and partly by securing powerful protection at Court as, for in- stance, that of Lord-Keeper Egerton and the accomplished Earl of Southampton, the liberal patron and personal friend of Shak- speare himself, this society enjoyed a freedom from the inter- ference of the authorities never conceded to the others, and many rare privileges as well. In this company our great dramatist seems to have reached a high, though not the highest, position. 94 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IX. 171. That he was profoundly acquainted with the theoretic principles of his art is clear from the inimitable " directions to the players " put into the mouth of Hamlet, which, in incredibly few words, contain its whole system. We .have good authority for supposing that he acted the Ghost in his tragedy of Ham- let : (81) the secondary, but graceful and touching character of Adam, the faithful old servant, in his As Ton Like It ; (72) the deeply pathetic impersonation of grief and despair in the popular tragedy of Hieronymo ; and the sensible citizen, Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's Every Man In His Humor. Such parts, it is plain, belong to a particular and perhaps secondary type ; and a contemporary reference ascribes to him some degree of excellence in the performance of kingly characters. There is reason to believe that Shakspeare, like Byron, labored under the personal defect of lameness, to which allusion is made in two of his sonnets; and this in itself would fully account for his imperfect success as an actor. In any case it was Richaj-d Burbadge who was the original and most popular performer of his great tragic creations, Richard III., Hamlet, Othello, and the like. 172. Shakspeare's first original poems were not dramatic; he must be regarded as the creator of a peculiar species of narra- tive composition which was destined to achieve an immediate and immense popularity. Venus and Adonis, which, in his ded- ication to Lord Southampton, he calls ' ' the first heir of his inven- tion," was published in 1593. It is highly probable that this poem exhibiting all the luxuriant sweetness, the voluptuous tenderness of a youthful genius was-conceived, if not composed, at Stratford. The Rape of Lucrccc, a somewhat similar but inferior w6rk, written in rhyme royal, enjoyed a great but inferior popularity. The former of these works was reissued in five several editions between the years 1593 and 1602 ; while the Lucrccc, during nearly the same lapse of time, appeared in three. At what period he began to be fully conscious of his own vast powers, and abandoned the adaptation of old plays for original dramatic composition.- it is quite impossible to ascertain ; for some of the works which bear the strongest impress of his won- drous genius were undoubtedly based upon productions by for- mer hands, and had undergone repeated recastings by himself and others. As examples of this may be mentioned Hamlet, (81, 82} Henry V., and King John. (77) Shakspeare must have speedily risen to so much importance in the Globe Com- A. D. 15G4-1G16. SIIAKSPEAEE. 95 pany as sufficed to call down upon him the attacks of envious or disapppinted rivals; for in 1592 the witty but disreputable Greene makes bitter allusions to his name and alleged want of learning, as well as to his activity in " bombasting out a blank verse." He is "Johannes Factotum," and on the strength of a few blustering common-places fancies himself " the only Shake- scene in a country." These phrases are found in the scurrilous pamphlet entitled Greene's Groats~Morth of Wit, published by Chettle after its author's death, and are evidently dictated by the envy of a disappointed rival ; but the publisher speedilv apolo- gized in terms which bear high testimony not only to the great poet's genius as a writer, but also to his stainless integrity. "Divers of worship," says Chettle, "have reported his upright- ness of dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious (elegant) grace in writing, that approves his art." Such did Shakspeare appear to his contemporaries in 1592. 173. It is almost certain, too, that the accomplished Pembroke and the generous Southampton were his admirers and patrons. The latter, indeed, is related to have made the poet a present of a thousand pounds; but though this princely gift was in all probability merely a generous contribution to the support of the drama as represented by Shakspeare's company, the action nev- ertheless shows the high respect which the poet had inspired. That Shakspeare, in his business relations with the theatre and the public, exhibited great good sense, prudence, and knowledge of the world, seems proved by the skill with which, during the time of his connection with it, the actors of the Globe managed to steer clear of the various dangers in which the puritanic opposi- tion of the London Corporation and the susceptibility of the Court involved almost all the other companies of players. For no sooner had he retired from the theatre than repeated causes of complaint arose from the petulance of his comrades, and were severely punished. Shakspeare's worldly prosperity seems to have gone on steadily increasing; for in 1597, when he was aged thirty-three, he purchased New Place in Stratford, and either built entirely or reconstructed this house, long considered the most considerable in the town. During the whole of his London life he no doubt made frequent visits to his native place ; and he was able to afford a tranquil asylum to his parents, who appear to have closed their lives under his roof. The death of his only eon Hamnet, in 1596, when the boy was in his twelfth year, 96 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IX. must have been a severe shock to so loving a heart; but in gen- eral his life seems to have been one of continued prosperity. In 1602 he purchased one hundred and seven acres of land ; and about the same time he paid four hundred and forty pounds for a share in the tithes of Stratford, as a means of secur- ing a safe revenue. In 1607 his favorite daughter Susanna married Dr. Hall; and in the following year she brought into the world a granddaughter to the dramatist. In 1611, the poet, having disposed of most of 'his interest in the Globe, finally withdrew to New Place, but did not long enjoy the retirement for which he had labored so long. He died two months after the marriage of his second daughter, Judith, to Thomas Qiiiney, on the 23d April, 1616, probably the anniversary of his birth- day, having just completed his fifty-second year. There exists a tradition that the great poet rose prematurely from a sick-bed to entertain Ben Jonson and Drayton, and brought on a relapse by " drinking too hard." He was buried in the parish church of Stratford ; and over his grave is erected a mural monument in the Italianized taste of that day, which is chiefly remarkable as containing a bust of the poet an authentic though not very well executed portrait. This, and the coarse engraving by Droeshout, prefixed to the first folio edition of his works in 1623, the accuracy of which is vouched for by Ben Jonson's eulogistic verses, seem to be the most trustworthy of his portraits. I7i. But few relics of Shakspeare still remain ; the house of New Place has long been destroyed ; but the garden in which it stood, as well as the house where the poet was born, are still preserved. His will, which was made a month before his death, testifies to his kind and affectionate disposition; to each of his old comrades and "fellows" he leaves some token of regard, generally " twenty-six shillings and eight pence apiece to buy them rings." The three autographs attached to this document, and one or two more, are literally the only specimens that have been preserved of the writing of that immortal hand. 175. It now becomes absolutely necessary to employ some method of classifying the works of the great dramatist into groups. The most valuable principle of classification would be the chronological, which would furnish us with a complete his- tory of the growth of Shakspeare's mind ; but this mode, though it has exercised the ingenuity and research of many laborious and acute investigators, has furnished no results which can be Ii A. D. 1564-1616. SHAKSPEAEE. 97 depended upon a fact evidenced by their extreme discrepancy. Upon the order of the pieces as given in the first folio edition, published in 1623 by Heminge and Condell, Shakspeare's friends and " fellows," it is evident no reliance can be placed. The most superficial examination is sufficient to prove that, in spite of the assurances of the editors as to its having been based upon the "papers" of their immortal colleague, this publication must be regarded as little better than a hasty speculation, entered into for the sake of profit and without much regard to the literary reputation of the great poet. And though the system of group- ing them as Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories, has at all events the advantage of clearness, and is that upon which are based most of the editions of the dramas, it also is in some meas- ure open to objection. Some of the pieces indeed (such as Othello, Lear, Hamlet} (81* 82) are distinctly tragedies, in the ordinary sense of that word, and others (As Tou Like It, (72} or Twelfth Night) are as evidently comedies ; but there exists a considerable number of the plays which, from their tones and incidents, might be ranged equally under both heads. Indeed, in almost all, the tragic and comic elements are more or less in- termixed, and it is precisely this mixture of the two in the same piece which constitutes the peculiar distinguishing trait of the noble romantic drama of England in the Shaksperian Age ; as well as its peculiar excellence and title of superiority, as a picture of life and nature, over the national drama of every other country. 170. A third mode of classification is based upon the sources from which Shakspeare drew the materials for his dramatic crea- tions. These will naturally divide themselves first into the two great genera History and Fiction ; while the former of these two genera will naturally subdivide into different classes or de- grees of historical authenticity, ranging from vague and half- poetical legend to the comparatively firm ground of recent historical events. Again, the legendary category may be re- ferred to the different countries from whose chronicles the events were borrowed : thus Hamlet is taken from the Danish chroni- cler Saxo-Grammaticus ; Macbeth, Lear, and Cymbeline refer respectively to the legends, more or less fabulous, of Scottish and British history ; while Coriolanus, Julius C translation of Plutarch from the Coriolanus ) French of Bishop Amyot. Titus Andronicus (Tragedy). Probably an older play on the same subject. ii. Authentic : Henry VI., Part I. ) The Contention between the fa- __ Part II V ntous Houses of Tork and Lan- __ p . jj y f caster; and the True Tragedy J of Richard Duke of Tork. John. An older play. (77) Richard II. The Chronicles of Hall, Fabian, and Hol- linshed. Richard III. (78) The Chronicles, and an older but very inferior play. Henry IV., Parti. -- Part II. \- The Famous Victories of Henry V. Henry V. Henry VIII. (79, 8O) (Foxe, Cavendish, Hall.) II. FICTION. Midsummer Night's Dream (Comedy). (75, 76, 87) Chaucer's Knight's Tale. Comedy of Errors (Comedy) . The Mcnxchmi of Plautus. 100 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. IX. Tatntng of the Shrew (Comedy). An older play. Lovers Labor's Lost (Comedy). Unknown; probably an Italian play. Two Gentlemen of' Verona (Comedy). Unknown. Romeo and Juliet (Tragedy). Paynter's Palace of Pleasure. Merchant of Venice (Tragi-comedy). (74) The Pecorone and the Gesta Romanorum. All's Well that Ends Well (Comedy). The Palace of Pleasure, translated from Boccacio. Much Ado about Nothing (Comedy). An episode of the Orlando Furioso. As You Like It (Comedy). (72, 75) Lodge's Rosalynde, and the Coke's Tale of Gamelyn. Merry Wives of Windsor (Comedy). Unknown. Troilus and Cressida (Tragedy). Chaucer, and the Re- cuyell of Troye. Measure for Measure (Tragi-comedy). Cinthio's Heca- tommithi. Winter's Tale (Comedy). Greene's tale of Dorastus and Fatvnia. Timon of Athens (Tragedy). Plutarch, Lucian, and Pal- ace of Pleasure. Othello (Tragedy). Cinthio's Hecatommithi. Tempest (Comedy). (&6*) Unknown. Twelfth Night (Comedy). A novel by Bandello, imitated by Belleforest. Pericles (Comedy). Twine's translation of the Gesta Romanorum. 179. From this classification it will be / een that many plays were based upon preceding dramatic works treating of the same, or nearly the same subjects; and in some few cases we possess the more ancient pieces themselves, exhibiting different degrees of imperfection and barbarism. In one or two examples we have more than one edition of the same play in its different stages towards complete perfection under the hand of Shakspearc, of which Hamlet is the most notable fnstance. A careful collation of such various editions furnishes us with precious materials for the investigation of the most interesting problem that literary criticism can approach the tracing of the different phases of A. D. 1564-1616. SHAKSPEARE. 101 elaboration through which every great work must pass. The first impression produced on the reader by the Historical cate- gory of Shakspeare's dramas, is the astonishing force and com- pleteness with which the poet seized the general and salient peculiarities of the age and country which he undertook to repro- duce. With the limited scholarship that he'pVobnbly' posses f his work most carefully elaborated, and in them we often find penetration in judging, and skill in portraying varieties of human nature. 282. IZAAK WALTON (1593-1683) was born in Stafford, and passed his early manhood in London, where he carried on the humble business of a "sempster" or linendraper. At about fifty he was able to retire from trade, probably with such a com- petency as was sufficient for his modest desires ; and lived to the great age of ninety in ease and tranquillity, enjoying the friend- ship of many of the most learned and accomplished men of his time, and amusing himself with literature and his beloved pas- time of the angle. He produced at different times the Lives of five persons, all distinguished for their virtues and accomplish- ments namely, Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Bishop Sanderson, with the first, second, and last of whom he had been intimate. These biographies are unlike anything else in litera- ture ; they are written with such a tender and simple grace, with such an unaffected fervor of personal attachment and simple piety, that they will ever be regarded as masterpieces. But Walton's great work is the Complete Angler, (158} a treatise on his favorite art of fishing, in which the precepts for the sport are combined with such inimitable descriptions of English river- scenery, such charming dialogues, and so prevailing a tone of gratitude for God's goodness, that the book is absolutely unique in literature. The treatise, with a quaint gravity that adds to its charm, is thrown into a series of dialogues, first between Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, each of whom in turn proclaims the superiority of his favorite sport, and afterwards between Piscator and Venator, the latter of whom is converted by the angler, and becomes his disciple. No other literature possesses a book similar to the Complete Angler, the popularity of which seems likely to last as long as the language. A second pert was added by CHARLES COTTON (1630-1687), a clever poet, author of The Voyage to Ireland, the friend and adopted son of Isaac, and his rival in the passion for angling. The continuation, though inferior, breathes the same spirit, and, like it, contains many beautiful and simple lyrics in praise of the art. 283. One of the most charming, as well as solid and useful, writers of this period was JOHN EVELYN (1620-1706), a gentleman 162 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XV. of good family and considerable fortune, who was one of the founders of the delightful art, so successfully practised in Eng- land, of gardening and planting. His principal works are Sylva, a treatise on the nature and management of forest-trees, to the precepts of which, as well as to the example of Evelyn himself, the country is indebted for its abundance of magnificent timber; and Terra, a work on agriculture and gardening. In his feeling for the art of gardening he is the worthy successor of Bacon, and predecessor of Shenstone. Evelyn has left also a Diary, j?>,9) giving a minute account of the state of society in his time, and pictures of the incredible infamy and corruption of the Court of Charles II., through the abominations of which the , pure and gentle spirit of Evelyn passed, like the Lady in Comus, amid the bestial rout of the Enchanter. 284. An original and even comic personality of this era is SAMUEL PEPYS (1632-1703), whose individual character was as singular as his writings. Though the cadet of an ancient family he was born in very humble circumstances ; but by the protection of a distant connection, Sir Edward Montagu, he was placed in a subordinate office in the Admiralty; and by his punctuality, honesty, and knowledge of business, he gradually rose to the important post of Secretary in that department. He remained many years in this office, and must be considered as almost the only honest and able public official connected with the Naval administration during the reigns of Charles II. and James II. ; contributing by his honesty and activity to the reconstruction of the navy that took place in the latter king's reign. During the whole of his long and active career, Pepys had amused him- self, for the eternal gratitude of posterity, in writing down, day by day, in a sort of cypher or shorthand, a Diary of everything he saw, did, or thought. (i6'O) After having been preserved for about a century and a half, this composition has been deci- phered and given to the world in the present century; and the whole range of literature does not present a record more curious in itself, or exhibiting a more singular and laughable type of human character. Pepys was not only by nature a thorough gossip, curious as an old woman, with a strong taste for occa- sional jollifications, and a touch of the antiquary and curiosity- hunter; but he was necessarily brought into contact with all classes of persons, from the King and his Ministers down to the .poor half-starved sailors whose pay he had to distribute. The A. D. 1611-1677. JAMES HARRINGTON. 163 Diary is a complete scandalous chronicle of a society so gay and debauched that the simple description of what took place is equal to the most dramatic picture of the novelist. The states- men, courtiers, and players, actually live before our eyes ; and there is no book that gives so lively a portraiture of one of the extraordinary states of society that then existed. Pepys' own character an inimitable mixture of shrewdness, vanity, good sense, and simplicity infinitely exalts the piquancy of his rev- elations ; and his book possesses the double interest of the value and curiosity of its matter, and of the coloring given to that matter by the oddity of the narrator. 285. The political commotions of this century naturally awakened a keen interest in the philosophy of government and started many eager minds on the investigation of the principles on which civil authority and civil society are based. High mo- narchical notions were advocated by SIR ROBERT FILMER (d. 1688), who, in his Patriarcha, published in 1680, arrived, though by a different process of reasoning, at the same results as Hobbes. His fundamental principle is, that the paternal authority is abso- lute, and that the first kings beingYathers of families have trans- mitted their power to their descendants. This principle was first combated by the illustrious Algernon Sidney (1621-1683), whose Discoiirses on Government (153} is a formal refutation of Fil- mer's theory. JAMES HARRINGTON also (1611-1677), i his Oceana, attempted a solution of the same ever-interesting prob- lem. This work, like Bacon's " New Atlantis," contains an elab- orate scheme for the establishment of a pure republic upon phil- osophical principles, carried out to those minute details that are so frequently found in paper constitutions. Harrington was the founder of the famous Rota Club, a Society of political enthu- siasts who met to discuss their pet theories, to which belonged most of the philosophical republicans of the day. 164 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVI. CHAPTER XVI. THE NEW DRAMA AND THE CORRECT POETS. 286. THE new drama that followed the Restoration differed from the old both in moral tone and literary form. As to the first, it is marked by that profound corruption which distin- guishes the reign of Charles II. ; and as to the second, the artificial distinction between tragedy and comedy was strongly marked, and generally maintained with the same severity as upon the stage of France, which had become the chief model of imitation. In the place of the Romantic Drama arose the exag- gerated, heroic, and stilted tragedy on the one hand, and on the other the Comedy of artificial life, which, drawing its materials not from nature, but from society, took for its aim the delinea- tion not of character, but of manners which is indeed the proper object of what is correctly termed Comedy in the strictest sense. Wit, therefore, now supplanted humor; and England produced, during the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth centuries, a constellation of splendid dramatists; whose works, however, owing to their abominable profligacy, are now become almost unknown to the general reader. 287. Though this class of writers may be said to begin with SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE (1636-1689) whose principal work, the Man of Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, was produced in 1676 yet the earliest of any eminence was WILLIAM WYCH- ERLEY (1640-1715). Born of a good Shropshire family, he was educated in France, where he embraced Catholicism ; but upon his return to England he once more became a member of the national church. Adorned with all the graces of P>ench court- liness, and remarkable for the beauty of his person, Wycherley, while nominally studying the Law, became a brilliant figure the gay and profligate society of the day. His first comedy, Love in a Wood, was not acted until he had reached the age of about thirty-two ; which was followed, in 1673, by the Gentlemen Dancing- Master ) the plot of which was borrowed from Calderon. A. D. 1636-1715. ETHEREGE. WYCHERLET. 165 His two greatest and most successful comedies are the Country Wife, acted in 1675, and the Plain Dealer, in 1677. His union with the Countess of Drogheda, which commenced in an acci- dental and even romantic manner, was not such as to secure either his happiness or his interest; and after her death he re- mained several years in confinement for debt. He was at last liberated, partly by the assistance of James II. ; and on this occasion he rejoined the Catholic church. The remainder of Wycherley's life is melancholy and ignoble. In 1704, with the assistance of Pope, then a mere boy, he concocted a huge collection of stupid and obscene poems, which fell dead upon the public. The momentary friendship and bitter quarrel of the old man and the young critic form a curious and instructive pic- ture. On his very death-bed he married a young girl of sixteen, with the sole purpose of injuring his family. 288. It is by the Country Wife and the Plain Dealer that posterity will judge the dramatic genius of Wycherley. Of the first, the leading idea is evidently borrowed from the Ecole dcs Femmes of Molieije, and that of the second from the same author's Misanthrope. Nothing can more clearly indicate the unspeakable moral corruption of that epoch in our drama, and the degree in which that corruption was exemplified by Wych- erley, than to observe the way in which he has modified, while he borrowed, the data of the Great French dramatist. Never- theless the intrigue of the piece is animated and amusing; and the dialogue, as is invariably the case in Wycherley's produc- tions, is elaborated to a high degree of liveliness and repartee. In the Plain Dealer the writer's total want of sensibility to moral impressions is still more painfully apparent. The tone of sen- timent in Moliere, as in all creators of the highest order, is invariably pure in its general tendency. Alceste, in sjfcite of his faults, is a truly respectable nay, a noble character. But Wych- erley borrowed Alceste ; and in his hands the virtuous and in- jured hero of Moliere has become, to use Macaulay's words, " a ferocious sensualist, who believes himself to be as great a rascal as he thinks everybody else." 289. The second prominent name in this group of brilliant comic writers is that of SIR JOHN VANBRUGH (1666-1726), who united in his person the rarely combined talents of architect and dramatist. Of his skill as an architect, Castle Howard and Blenheim are enduring monuments; the latter being the splendid 166 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVI. palace constructed at the national expense for the Duke of Marl- borough. Vanbrugh was appointed King-at-Arms; and was employed, both in this function, and as an architect, in many honorable posts. 290. Vanbrugh's comedies, the production of which com- menced in 1697, are the Relapse, the Provoked Wife, SEsop, the Confederacy, and the first sketch of the Provoked Husband, left unfinished, and afterwards completed by Colley Gibber. It still keeps possession of the stage, and is one of the best and most popular comedies in the language. Vanbrugh's principal merit is inexhaustible liveliness of character and incident. His fops, his booby squires, his pert chamber-maids, and valets, his in- triguing ladies, his romps, and his blacklegs, are all drawn from the life, and delineated with great vivacity : though there is a good deal of exaggeration in his characters. In the Relapse, Lord Foppington is an admirable impersonation of the pom- pous and suffocating coxcomb of those days ; Sir Tunbelly Clum- sy, the dense, brutal, ignorant country squire, a sort of proto- type of Fielding's Western, forms an excellent contrast with him ; and in Hoyden, Vanbrugh has given the first specimen of a class of characters which he drew with peculiar skill, that of a bouncing rebellious girl, full of animal spirits, and awaiting only the opportunity to break out of all rule. The most strik- ing character in the Provoked Wife is Sir John Brute, whose drunken uproarious blackguardism was one of Garrick's best impersonations. The Confederacy is perhaps Vanbrugh's finest comedy in point of plot. All the sentimental portions of the Provoked Husband were the additions of Colley Cibber, who lived at a time when the moral 4>r sermonizing element was thought essential in comedy. This part of the intrigue, how- ever, had the honor of being the prototype of Sheridan's de- lightful scenes between Sir Peter and Lady Teazle in the School for Scandal. In brilliancy of dialogue, Vanbrugh is inferior to Wycherley; but his high animal spirits, and his extraordinary power of contriving sudden incidents, more than compensate for the deficiency. 2U1. GEORGE FARQUHAR (1678-1708) was born at London- derry ; and having received some education at college he joined the stage; which, after a time, he quitted, and served for a short period in the army. His military experience enabled him to give very lively and faithful representations of gay, rattling ofTi- A. D. 1678-1729. FARQUHAR. CONOREVE. 167 cers ; and furnished him with materials for one of his pleasant- est comedies. His dramatic productions consist of seven plays : Love and a Bottle, the Constant Couple, the Inconstant, the Stage Coach, the Tivin Rivals, the Recruiting Officer, and the Beaux' Stratagem. These were produced in rapid succession, for the literary career of poor Farquhar was compressed into a short space of time between 1698, when the first of the above pieces was acted, and the author's early death about 1708. 292. The works of Farquhar are a faithful reflection of his gay, loving, vivacious character; and it appears that down to his early death, not only did they go on increasing in joyous animation, but exhibited a constantly augmenting skill and in- genuity in construction, his last works being incomparably his best. Among them the best are the Constant Couple (the in- trigue of which is extremely animated), the Inconstant, the Re- cruiting Officer, and the Beaux' Stratagem. The Beaux' Strat- agem is decidedly the best-constructed of our author's plays ; and the expedient of the two embarrassed gentlemen, who come down into the country disguised as a master and his servant, though not perhaps very probable, is extremely well conducted, and furnishes a series of lively and amusing adventures. Throughout Farquhar's plays the predominant quality is a gay geniality, which more than compensates for his less elaborate brilliancy in sparkling repartee. He seems always to write from his heart ; and therefore, though we shall in vain seek in his dramas for a very high standard of morality, his writings are free from that inhuman tone of blackguard heartlessness which disgraces the comic literature of the time. 203. WILLIAM CONGREVE (1670-1729) will always stand at the very head of the comic dramatists; while he certainly occu- pies no undistinguished place among the tragedians. He was born in Yorkshire of an ancient and honorable family, in 1670; and received his education, first at a school in Kilkenny, and afterwards at the University of Dublin ; where he acquired a considerable amount of scholarship, particularly in the depart- ment of Latin literature. During his whole life he seems to have thirsted after fame both as a man of elegance and as a man of letters; but he was all his life tormented by the diffi- culty of harmonizing the two incompatible aspirations. Con- greve's career was singularly auspicious : the brilliancy of his early works received instant recompense in solid patronage ; ha 108 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVI. obtained many lucrative sinecures ; he associated on equal terms with the greatest and most splendid of his time, and accumu- lated a large fortune. He was regarded by the poets, from Dryden to Pope, with enthusiastic admiration : the former hailed his entrance upon the literary arena with fervent praise, and in some very touching lines named Congreve his poetical successor: and the latter, when publishing his great work of the translation of Homer, passed over the powerful and the illustrious to dedicate his book to him. In his old age Congreve became the intimate friend of the eccentric Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, daughter and inheritress of the great Duke; to whom at his death he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune. 294. The literary career of Congreve begins with a novel of insignificant merit, which he published under the pseudonym of Cleophil ; but the real inauguration of his glory was the repre- sentation, in 1693, of his first comedy, the Old Bachelor. This work, the production of a young man of twenty-three, was re- ceived by the public and by the critics with a tempest of applause. The chief merit is the unrivalled ease and brilliancy of the dia- logue. Congreve's scenes are one incessant flash and sparkle of the finest repartee; the dazzling rapier-thrusts of wit and satiric pleasantry succeed each other without cessation ; but the quality in which he stands alone is his skill in divesting this brilliant intellectual sword-play of every shade of formality and constraint. His conversations are an exact copy of refined and intellectual conversation, though of course containing far more brilliancy than any real conversation ever exhibited. The char- acters in the Old Bachelor, though conventional, are exceedingly amusing : for example, Captain Bluff is a reproduction of the bullying braggadocio almost deserving of a place beside Parolles, Bessus, and Bobadill. 295. Congreve's second theatrical venture, the Double Dealer, acted in 1694, was much less successful than its predecessor; but Love for Love, which was acted in 1695, is a masterpiece. The intrigue is effective, and the characters exhibit infinite variety, and relieve each other with unrelaxing spirit. Valentine, An- gelica, Sir Sampson Legend, the doting old astrologer Foresight, Mrs. Frail, Miss Prue, and above all the inimitable Ben the first attempt to portray on the stage the rough, unsophisticated sailor the whole dramatis persona, down to the most insig- nificant, are a crowd of picturesque and well-contrasted oddities. A.D. 1 650-1720. JEREMY COLLIER. 1G9 Sir Sampson Legend is one of those big blustering characters that make their way by noise and confidence ; and was the model whence Sheridan afterwards copied his Sir Anthony Absolute. 29G. Two years after this triumph Congreve produced his one tragedy, the Mourning- Bride, which was received with no less ardent encomiums than the comedies. This piece is written in that pompous, solemn, and imposing strain which the adoption of French models had rendered universal. Its chief merits con- sist in dignified passages of declamation ; and there are several descriptive ones of considerable power and melody, though their merit is rather that of narrative than dramatic poetry. Of this kind is the perpetually quoted description of a temple, which Dr. Johnson so extravagantly eulogizes. 297. In 1698, JEREMY COLLIER (1650-1726), an ardent, non- juring clergyman, published his Short View of the Profanencss and Immorality of the English Stage. This pamphlet was writ- ten with extraordinary fire, wit, and energy; and the evil which it combated was so general, so inveterate, and so glaring, that he immediately ranged upon his side all moral and thinking men in the nation. He anatomized with a vigorous and unsparing scalpel the foul ulcer of theatrical immorality, and cauterized it with such merciless satire that Dryden, powerful as he was in controversy, remained silent out of shame. The gauntlet, how- ever, was taken up by Congreve ; but the defence he made was poor, and the victory remained, both as regards morality and wit, on the side of Collier. The controversy had the effect of inaugurating a better tone in the drama and in lighter literature in general ; and from that period dates the gradual but rapid improvement which has ended in rendering the literature of England the purest and healthiest in Europe. 298. Congreve's last dramatic work was the Way of the World, performed in 1700. Its success was not great, although its dia- logue exhibits the rare charm which never deserted him, and though it contains in Millamant one of the most delicious por- traits of a gay triumphant beauty, coquette, and fine lady, ever placed upon the stage. In his old age the poet produced a vol- ume of fugitive and miscellaneous trifles, which do not much rise above the level of a class of composition extremely fashionable at that period. 299. Among the exclusively tragic dramatists of the age of Dryden, the first place belongs to THOMAS OTWAY (1651-1685), 170 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVI. who died, after a life of wretchedness and irregularity, at the early age of thirty-four. He received a regular education at Winchester School and Oxford, but very early embraced the profession of the actor; in w r hich part of his career he produced three tragedies Alcibiades, Don Carlos, and Titus and Bere- nice. After a brief service in the army he returned to the stage ; and in the years extending from 1680 to his death he wrote four more tragedies Caius Marc/us, The Orphan, The Soldiers Fortune, and Venice Preserved. All these works, with the ex- ception of The Orphan and Venice Preserved, are now nearly forgotten ; but the glory of Otway is so firmly established upon these latter, that it will probably endure as long as the language itself. The life of this unfortunate poet was an uninterrupted series of poverty and distress; and his death has frequently been cited as a striking instance of the miseries of a literary career. 300. As a tragic dramatist, Otway's most striking merit is his pathos. The distress in his pieces is carried to an intense and almost hysterical pitch : the sufferings of Monimia in The Or- phan, and the moral agonies inflicted upon Belvidera in Venice Preserved, are carried to an almost intolerable height; but we see tokens of the essentially second-rate quality of Otway's genius the moment he attempts to delineate madness. The fre- quent declamatory scenes are worked up to a high degree of excellence; and Otway, with the true instinct of dramatic fit- ness, has introduced many of those familiar and domestic details from which the high classical dramatist would have shrunk as too ignoble. Otway's style is vigorous and racy; and in reading his best passages we are perpetually struck by a sort of flavor of ' Ford, Beaumont, and other great masters of the Elizabethan era. 301. NATHANIEL LEE (d. 1692), known generally as " the mad poet," not only assisted Dryden in the composition of several of his pieces, but produced many original dramatic works, the most celebrated of which is the Rival Queens, or Alexander the Great. THOMAS SOUTHERNS (1659-1746) was the author often plays, the most conspicuous of which are the tragedies of Isa- bella, or the Fatal Marriage, and the pathetic drama of Oroo- nolto. The latter is founded upon the true adventures of an African prince : the subject is said to have been given to Sou- therne by Aphra Behn, who being the daughter of a governor of Surinam, where the events took place, was personally acquainted both with the incidents and the individuals which form tho A. D. 1673-1692.. HOWE. SHADWELL. 171 groundwork of the story. Among the seventeen pieces produced by JOHN CROWNE (d. 1703?) may be mentioned the tragedy of Thyestes and the comedy entitled Sir Courtly Nice. Both of these works possess considerable merit. 302. NICHOLAS ROWE (1673-1718) was born in 1673, and studied in the Temple, employing his leisure hours in writing for the stage. He was cordially received in the brilliant and literary circles of his day, and was a member of that intellectual society which surrounded Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot, and Prior, and which was bound together by such strong ties of intimacy and friendship. His career was most brilliant. He was not only in possession of an independent fortune, but was splendidly rewarded for his literary exertions by the gift of many lucrative places in the patronage of Government. Thus he was Poet- Laureate and Surveyor of the Customs, Clerk of the Council in the service of the Prince of Wales, and Clerk of the Presenta- tions. The profession of letters enjoyed a transient gleam of prosperity and consideration ; the period preceding and that fol- lowing this epoch being remarkable for the want of social con- sideration nay, the degradation attaching to the author's profession. Rowe was the first who undertook an edition of Shakspeare upon true critical and philological principles ; and his edition has, at all events, the merit of exhibiting a profound and loyal admiration of the great poet's genius. His dramatic, productions amount to seven, the principal being Jane S/tore, the Fair Penitent, and Lady Jane Grey, all of course tragedies. Tenderness is Rowe's chief dramatic merit; in the diction of his -works we incessantly trace the influence of his study of the manner of the great Elizabethan playwrights. But this imi- tation is often only superficial. In the Fair Penitent, which is simply the Fatal Doivry of Massinger in another form, we have an almost intolerable load of sorrow accumulated on the head of the heroine. It is curious that the character of the seducer in this play, " the gallant, gay Lothario," should have become the proverbial type of the faithless lover just as Don Juan has been in our own time and should have furnished Richardson with the outline which he filled up so successfully in his masterly portrait of Lovelace. 303. The only other names that need be cited among the dramatists of this period are those of Shadwell and Lillo. THOMAS SHADWELL (1640-1692) wrote seventeen plays, but is 172 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVI. now chiefly known by Dryden's satire as the hero of Mac-Fleck* noe, and the Og of Absalom and AchitopJieL On the Revolu- tion, he succeeded Dryden as Poet-Laureate. GEORGE LILLO (1693-1739) is in many respects a remarkable and singular literary figure. His dramatic works consist of a peculiar species of what may be called tragedies of domestic life; and the prin- cipal of them are George Barn-well, the Fatal Curiosity, and Ardcn of Faversham. In George Barmvell is traced the career of a London shopman a real person who is lured by the artifices of an abandoned woman and the force of his own pas- sion first into embezzlement, and then into the murder of an uncle ; and finally expiates his offences on the scaffold. The subject of the Fatal Curiosity, Lillo's most powerful work, is far more dramatic in its interest. A couple, reduced by circum- stances, and by the absence of their son, to the lowest depths of distress, receive into their house a stranger, who is evidently in possession of a large sum : while he is asleep, they determine to assassinate him for the purpose of plunder, and afterwards dis- cover in their victim their long-lost son. It will be remembered that the tragic story of Ardcn of Faversham, a tissue of conjugal infidelity and murder, was an event that really took place in the reign of Elizabeth, and had furnished materials for a very popu- lar drama, attributed,, but on insufficient evidence, to Shakspeare among other playwrights of the time. 304. It is remarkable how many of the non-dramatic poetical writers of this time were men of rank and fashion : their literary efforts were regarded as the elegant accomplishment of ama- teurs; and though their more ambitious productions are gen- erally didactic and critical, and their lighter works graceful and harmonious songs, they must be regarded less as the deliberate results of literary labor than as the pastime of fashionable dilet- tanti. EARL of ROSCOMMON (1634-1685), the nephew of the fa- mous Straffbrd, produced a poetical ssay on Translated Verse and a version of the Art of Poetry from Horace, which were received by the public and the men of letters with an extrava- gance of praise attributable to the respect then entertained for any intellectual accomplishment in a nobleman. EARL of ROCH- ESTER (1647-1680), so celebrated for his insane debaucheries and the witty eccentricities which made him one of the most promi- ne.nt figures in the profligate court of Charles II., produced a number of poems, chiefly songs and fugitive lyrics, which proved A. D. 1676-1703. PHILIPS. POMFBET. 173 how great were the natural talents he had wasted in the most insane extravagance. To the same category may be ascribed the DUKE of BUCKINGHAM (Sheffield) (1649-1721), and the EARL of DORSET (1638-1706), perfect specimens of the aristocratic literary dilettanti of those days. The former is best known by his F.ssvy on Poetry, written in the heroic couplet; the latter by his charming, playful song To all you ladies now on land, said to have been written at sea on the eve of an engagement with the Dutch fleet under Opdam. It is addressed by the courtly volunteer to the ladies of Whitehall, and breathes the gay and gallant spirit that animates the chanson militaire, in which the French so much excel. 305. The only poets of any comparative importance, not be- longing to the higher classes of society, were Philips and Pomfret, both of whom lived in the latter part of the seventeenth century. JOHN PHILIPS (1676-1708) is the author of a half- descriptive, half-didactic poem on the manufacture of Cider, written upon the plan of the Georgics of Virgil ; and of Blen- heim, an heroic poem on the exploits of Marlborough ; but he is now known to the general reader by his Splendid Shilling, a pleasant jeu d' esprit, in which the learned and pompous style of Milton is agreeably parodied, by being applied to the most trivial subject. JOHN POMFRET (1667-1703) was a clergyman; and the only work by which he is now remembered is his poem of The Choice, giving a sketch of such a life of rural and literary retirement as has been the hoc erat in votis of so many. 174 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIL CHAPTER XVII. THE SECOND REVOLUTION. 306. THE period of the great and beneficent Revolution of 1688 was characterized bj the establishment of constitutional free- dom in the state, and no less by a powerful outburst of practical progress in science and philosophy. It was this period that pro- duced Newton in physical, and Locke in intellectual science. JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704) was born in 1632, educated at West- minster School and Christ-Church, Oxford, where he particu- larly devoted himself to the study of the physical sciences, and especially of medicine. There is no question also that his in- vestigations during the thirteen years of his residence at Oxford had been much turned to metaphysical subjects, and that he had seen the necessity of applying to this branch of knowledge that experimental or inductive method of which his great master Bacon was the apostle. After declining an offer from the Duke of Ormond of high preferment in the Irish Church, he in 1666 became acquainted with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury, to whom he is said to have rendered himself useful by his medical skill. He attached himself intimately both to the domestic circle and to the political fortunes of this states- man, in whose house he resided several years, having under- taken the education first of the Chancellor's son and afterwards of his grandson; the latter of whom has left no unworthy name as an elegant, philosophical, and moral essayist. He was nom- inated, on his patron becoming Chancellor in 1672, Secretary of the Presentations, with which he combined another appoint- ment; but these he lost in the following year on the first fall of his patron. In 1675 he visited PVance for his health; and his journals and letters are not only valuable for the accurate but very unfavorable account they give of the then state of French society, but are exceedingly amusing, animated, and gay. In 1679 Locke returned to England and rejoined Shaftesbury on his second accession to power, but soon shared in the final fall of that statesman. A. D. 1G32-1704. JOHN LOCKE. 175 307. He now sought an asylum in Holland, was deprived of his studentship at Christ-Church, and denounced as a factious and rebellious agitator, and as a dangerous heresiarch in philos- ophy. At the Revolution of 1688 he returned to England in the same fleet which conveyed Queen Mary from Holland to the country whose crown she had been called to share. From this period his career was eminently useful, active, and even brilliant. He was appointed a member of the Council of Trade; and in that capacity took a prominent part in carrying out Montague's difficult and most critical operation of calling in and reissuing the silver coinage; but after a short service Locke retired from public employment, and resided during the remainder of his life with his friend Sir F. Masham, at Gates, in Essex. Lady Masham, an accomplished and intellectual woman, and the daughter of the philosopher Cudworth, was tenderly loved and respected by her illustrious guest, who enjoyed under her roof the ease and tranquillity he had so nobly earned. Locke died in 1704; and his personal character seems to have been one of those which approach perfection as nearly as can be expected from our fallible and imperfect nature. oOS. The writings of this excellent thinker are numerous, varied in subject, all eminently useful, and breathing a constant love of humanity. In 1689 ne published the Letters on Tolera- tion, originally composed in Latin, but immediately translated into French and English ; in which work he goes over somewhat the same ground as had been occupied by Jeremy Taylor (21.6) in his Liberty of Prophesying, ajid by Milton in the immortal Areopagitica. (130) The Treatise on Civil Government was undertaken to overthrow those slavish theories of Divine Right which were then so predominant among the extreme monarchi- cal parties, and nowhere carried to such extravagance as in the University of Oxford. Locke's more special object was the refutation of Sir Robert Filmer's once famous book entitled Patriarcha, already referred to. Locke combats and overthrows his monstrous theory, and seeks for the origin of government in the common interest of society ; showing that any form of policy which secures that interest may lawfully be acquiesced in, while none that does not secure it can claim any privilege of exemp- tion from resistance. 300. The greatest, most important, and most universally known of Locke's works is the Essay on the Human Understand- 176 ^ ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVII. ing. (161} In this book, which contains the reflections and researches of his whole life, and which was in the course of com- position during eighteen years, Locke shows all his powers of close deduction and accurate observation. His object was to give a rational and clear account of the nature of the human mind, of the real character of our ideas, and of the mode in which they are presented to the consciousness. Locke is eminently an inductive reasoner, and was the first to apply the method of experiment and observation to the obscure phenom- ena of the mental operations ; and he is thus to be regarded as the most illustrious disciple of Bacon. The most striking feature in this, as in all Locke's philosophical works, is the extreme clearness, plainness, and simplicity of his language, which is always such as to be intelligible to an ordinary understanding. 310. The Essay on Education has, like the book just examined, a practical tendency, and may be said to have mainly contributed to bring about that beneficial revolution which has taken place in the training of the young. Much of what is humane and philosophical in Rousseau's celebrated Emile is plainly bor- rowed from Locke, who is not responsible for the absurdities and extravagances engrafted upon his plans by the Genevese theorist. His treatise On the Reasonableness of Christianity is distinguished by calm piety and benevolence ; and a small but admirable little book On the Conduct of the Understanding, which was not published until after the author's death, contains a kind of manual of reflections upon all those natural defects or acquired evil habits of the mind, which unfit it for the task of gaining and retaining knowledge. 311. To this period belongs a series of excellent writers who will always retain the place of classics in English prose, and who are equally worthy of admiration as Protestant theologians and as models of logical and persuasive eloquence. At the head of them stands ISAAC BARROW (1630-1677), a man of almost universal acquirements, whose sermons are still studied as the most powerful and majestic prose compositions that the seven- teenth century produced. He was born in 1630, educated at the Charter-house, whence he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was one of the most illustrious alumni. Of his personal courage he gave a striking proof in a sea-fight against an Algerine pirate, when returning from his travels in the East. At the University his studies seem to have embraced every A. D. -1630-1677. ISAAC BARROW. 177 branch of knowledge not only philology, but all the range of the mathematical sciences, together with Anatomy, Chemistry, and Botany. After some time he travelled through the greater part of Europe to the East, returning home by way of Germany and Holland in 1659. On his return he was appointed Profes- sor of Greek at Cambridge, to which he added the chair of Geometry in Gresham College, and afterwards the Lucasian professorship of Mathematics in the University. He was one of the ablest and profoundest mathematicians of his day, and cultivated with distinguished success those same departments of science in which his illustrious pupil and successor, Newton, gained his undying glory as Optics, Mechanics, and Astrono- my. Newton was, indeed, a pupil of Barrow, who warmly ap- preciated and befriended him; and it was to Newton that he resigned his Lucasian professorship. He had already taken orders, and his sermons, many of which were preached in Lon- don, now became famous. He was named one of the King's chaplains, and in 1672 was elected Master of Trinity College ; and having in his turn filled the high office of Vice-Chancellor of the University, he died of a fever at the early age of forty-six, in 1677. (162} 312. Barrow's pulpit orations are not only filled and almost overladen with thought, so 'that even the most powerful intellect must use all its force and employ all its attention to follow his reasoning, but they were, as compositions, elaborated with the greatest care, and revised and rewritten with scrupulous anxiety before he was satisfied with his work. His sermons are numer- ous ; and many of the most valuable of them form series, de- voted to the exhaustive explanation of some particular depart- ment of religious knowledge or belief: thus there is an excellent series of discourses commenting upon the Lord's Prayer, which is anatomized, clause by clause ; each article forming the text of a separate discourse. A similar set of sermons is devoted to the Creed, another to the Decalogue, another to the Sacraments, and so on. The predominant quality of Barrow's style is a weighty majesty of thought and diction ; every line that he pro- duced bears a peculiar stamp of unconscious power the vigor of a mind to w r hich no subtilty was too arduous, no deduction too obscure. There is perhaps no English prose-writer, the study of whose works would be more invigorating to the mind, and more adapted to the formation of a pure taste, than Bar* 173 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVII. row; nor can there be a better proof that the most capable critics have agreed in this opinion, than the fact that Chatham recommended Barrow to his son as the finest model of elo- quence, and the accomplished Landor has not hesitated to place him above all the greatest of the ancient thinkers and philosophers. 313. JOHN PEARSON (1613-1686), originally Professor of The- ology and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards Bishop of Chester, is a theologian of great merit. His most celebrated work is his Exposition of the Creed, which is still regarded as one of the most complete and searching treatises investigating the great fundamental principles of our faith. But next after Barrow, JOHN TILLOTSON (1630-1694) perhaps enjoys the highest and most durable popularity among the pul- pit orators of this time ; though he was a man of a calibre far inferior to Barrow. (163) He studied at Cambridge, where he at first rendered himself conspicuous for his decided Puritan sympathies. He, however, afterwards made no difficulty in conforming to the rules and discipline of the Anglican Church, and ultimately, in the reign of William and Mary, rose to the dignity of Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a person of easy, good-natured, and-amiable character; as a pastor and as a prel- ate he exhibited much zeal in correcting the abuses which had crept into the Church, and gave a notable example of liberal charity and episcopal virtue. He was renowned as a preacher; and his sermons, though falling far short of Barrow's in grasp of mind and vigor of expression, are precisely of such a nature as is most likely to command popularity. But it was not to the mere vulgar that Tillotson commended himself. Dryden did not hesitate to own that his own prose style was formed after Tillotson's. "If I have any talent for English," he said, " it is owing to my having often read the writings of the Archbishop Tillotson." 314. ROBERT SOUTH (1633-1716) enjoyed in his day the repu- tation of being the "wittiest Churchman " of the time. Though he wrote, when at Oxford, a copy of Latin verses congratulating Cromwell upon having made peace with the Dutch, he had em- braced even then the extreme Tory opinions prevalent in that University, where he filled the post of Public Orator. He often preached before Charles II., and was much admired by the courtly audiences of those days for the animation and even gay A. D. 1635-1672. STILL IN GFLEET. WILKINS. 179 ety of his manner, and the pleasant stories and repartees which he sometimes introduced into his sermons. The gross adulation with which he was not ashamed to address Charles II., and in which he lauded the virtues of Charles I., and his unmeasured denunciations of the principles and convictions of the popular party, have deservedly laid South open to the attacks of the op- posite side in politics and religion ; but there is no reason to question his sincerity. It is of more importance to our purpose to remark that he was a perfect master of English prose, and that his style combines ease, vigor, and rhythm, beyond that of any of his contemporaries. (J6'4) 315. Our limited space will not permit us to do more than mention the names of EDWARD STILLINGFLEET (1635-1699), and WILLIAM SHERLOCK (1641-1707) ; the first a celebrated contro- versialist, the victorious adversary of Dryden, but the defeated assailant of Locke; the second, author of a Practical Discourse Concerning Death, still in some repute. (_Z(>5) 310. THOMAS SPRAT (1636-1716), Bishop of Rochester, was a man renowned in his time for the brilliancy and variety of his talents. He was an ardent cultivator of physical science ; and was one of the members of the Royal Society, then recently founded. He was distinguished as a poet, though his writings in this department are now little read; and as a biographer of poets was the author of an excellent and interesting Life of Cowley. Besides these he was a theologian and preacher of no mean ability, and a very active contributor to the polemical and political literature of his day. 317. There are few episodes in the history of human knowl- edge more surprising than the sudden and dazzling progress made in the physical sciences towards the end of the seventeenth century; which was mainly due to the vivifying effect produced by the writings and the method of Bacon. A very prominent part in this great movement, especially in the branches of physics and natural history, was played by the Royal Society; that illustrious body which, originating in the meetings of a few learned and ingenious men at each other's houses, was incorpo- rated by Charles II. in 1662 into the Society to the labors of which human knowledge owes so much. 318. Among its founders one of the most active was DR. JOHN WILKINS (1614-1672), Bishop of Chester, a most energetic and ingenious man, whose vivacious inventiveness sometimes bor- 180 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVII. dered upon extravagance ; but who rendered great services, both in his writings and his conversation, to the cause of science. His principal contribution to literature is An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, which was print- ed in 1668. He was a theological writer and a preacher of high reputation; but his name is now chiefly associated with his proj- ects and inventions, and in particular with the prominent part he took, together with Boyle and others, in the organization of the Royal Society. He married the sister of Oliver Cromwell; and his stepdaughter was married to Tillotson. 319. SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1642-1727) was born in 1642, of a re- spectable but not opulent family, at Woolsthorpe, in Lincoln- shire. From his earliest boyhood he showed the greatest taste and aptitude for mechanical invention ; and entering the Univer- sity of Cambridge in 1660, he made such rapid progress in math- ematical studies that in nine years Barrow resigned in his favor the Lucasian professorship. The greater part of Newton's life was passed within the quiet walls of Trinity, of which College he is the most glorious ornament; and it was here that he elab- orated those admirable discoveries and demonstrations in Me- chanics, Astronomy, and Optics, which have placed his name in the very foremost rank of the benefactors of mankind. He sat in more than one parliament as member for his university; but he appears to have been of too reserved and retiring a character to take an active part in political discussion ; he was appointed Master of the Mint in 1695, and presided over that establish- ment at the critical period of Montagu's bold recall and reissue of the specie. He then promptly abandoned all those sublime researches in which he stands almost alone among mankind, and devoted all his energy and attention to the public duties that had been committed to his charge. In 1703 he was made president of the Royal Society, and knighted two years afterwards by Queen Anne. He died in 1727. His character, the only defect of which appears to have been a somewhat cold and suspicious temper, was the type of those virtues which ought to distinguish the scholar, the philosopher, and the patriot. His modesty was as great as his genius; and he invariably ascribed the attain- ment of his discoveries rather to patient attention than to any unusual capacity of intellect. His English writings, which are chiefly discourses upon the prophecies and chronology of the Scriptures, are composed in a rnanly, plain, and unaffected style, A. D. 1628-1715. JOHN EAT. GILBERT BURNET. 181 and breathe an intense spirit of piety ; though his opinions seem to have in some measure inclined towards the Unitarian type of theology. His glory, however, will always mainly rest upon his purely scientific works, the chief of which are so well known that it is almost superfluous to enumerate them, the Philosophic^ Naturalis Principia Mathcmatica ; and the invaluable treatise on Optics, of which latter science he may be said to have first laid the foundation. (169} 320. JOHN RAY (1628-1705), together with Derham and Wil- loughby, combined the descriptive department of Natural His- tory with moral and religious eloquence of a high order; they seem never to be weary of proclaiming the wisdom and good- ness of that Providence whose works they had so attentively studied. (154i) Ray was the first who elevated Natural History to the rank of a science. ROBERT BOYLE (1627-1691) was an able writer as well as a distinguished philosopher. (166) " No Englishman of the seventeenth century, after Lord Bacon," ob- serves Mr. Hallam, "raised to himself so high a reputation in experimental philosophy as Robert Boyle ; it has ever been re- marked that he was born in the year of Bacon's death, as the person destined by nature to succeed him. . . . His works oc- cupy six large volumes in quarto. They may be divided into theological or metaphysical, and physical or experimental. The metaphysical treatises, to use that word in a large sense, of Boyle, or rather those concerning Natural Theology, are very perspicuous, very free from system, and such as bespeak an in- dependent lover of truth." 321. One of the most extraordinary writers of this period at least in a purely literary sense was THOMAS BURNET ( I ^35-i7i5)) Master of the Charter-house, author of the eloquent and poetic declamation Tclluris Theoria Sacra, a work written in both Latin and English, and giving a hypothetical account of the causes which produced the various irregularities and undula- tions which we see in the earth's surface. The geological and physical theories of Burnet are fantastic in the extreme ; but the pictures which he has drawn of the devastation caused by the great unbridled powers of Nature are grand and magnificent, and give Burnet a claim to be placed among the most eloquent and poetical of prose-writers. 322. This writer must not be confounded with GILBERT BUR- NET (16^3-1715), born in Edinburgh in 1643, who was one of 182 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVII. the most active politicians and divines during the latter part of the seventeenth century. (J6*) By birth and personal predilec- tions he occupies a middle space between the extreme Episco- palian and Presbyterian parties ; and though a man of ardent and busy character, he was possessed of rare tolerance and candor. He was much celebrated for his talents as an extempore preacher, and was the author of a very large number of theological and political writings. Among these his History of the Reformation is still considered as one of the most valuable accounts of that important revolution. The first volume of this was published in 1679, and tne last in I 7 I 4- He also gave to the world an ac- count of the Life and Death of the witty and infamous Roch- ester, whose last moments he attended as a religious adviser, and whom his pious arguments recalled to a sense of repentance. He at one time enjoyed the favor of Charles II., but. soon for- feited it by the boldness of his remonstrances against the profli- gacy of the king, and by his defence of Lord William Russell. Burnet also published an Exposition of the XXXIX. Articles. On falling into disgrace at Court he travelled on the Continent; and afterwards attached himself close-ly to the service of William of Orange at the Hague, where he became the religious adviser of the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen. At the Revolution, Burnet accompanied the deliverer on his expedition to England, took a very active part in controversy and political negotiation, and was raised to the Bishopric of Salisbury, in which function ".ie gave a noble example of the zeal, tolerance, and humanity which ought to be the chief virtues of a Christian pastor. He died in 1715, leaving the MS. of his most important work, the History of My Ozvn Times, which he directed to be published after the lapse of six years. This work, consisting of Memoirs of the important transactions of which Burnet had been contem- porary, is of a similar nature and not inferior value to Claren- don's, which represents the events of English history from a nearly opposite point of view. Burnet is minute, familiar, and gossiping, but lively and trustworthy in the main as to facts; and no one who desires to make acquaintance with a very criti- cal and agitated period of our annals can dispense with the materials he has accumulated. A. D. 1688-1744. ALEXANDER POPE. 183 CHAPTER ,X VIII. THE SO-CALLED AUGUSTAN POETS. 323. SENSE, vigor, harmony, and a kind of careless yet majes- tic regularity, were the characteristics of that powerful school of poetry which was introduced into England at the Restoration, and of which Dryden is the most eminent type. These qualities were, in the so-called Augustan reign of Queen Anne, succeeded by a still higher polish, and an elegance sometimes degenerating into effeminacy. Far above all the poets of this epoch shines the brilliant name of ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744). He was born in London of a respectable Catholic family of good de- scent, in 1688. His father had been engaged in trade as a linen- draper, and had retired to a pleasant country house at Binfield, near Windsor; so that the childish imagination of the future poet imbibed impressions of rural beauty from the lovely scenerv _of the Forest. (17O-173*) The boy was of almost dwarfish stature, and so deformed that his after life was "one long dis ease." He exhibited an extraordinary precocity of intellect; "I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came," he says of himself; and his earliest attempts at poetry were made when very young. His father had acquired a competent fortune, which enabled the boy-poet to indulge that taste for study and poetical reading which continued to be the passion of his life. At sixteen he commenced his literary career by composing a collection of Pas- torals, and by translating portions of Statius, which were pub- lished in 1709. From this period his activity was unremitting; and an uninterrupted succession of works, equally varied in their subjects and exquisite in their finish, placed him at the head of the poets of his age,. His Essay on Criticism, (Jf 70) published in 1711, and highly praised by Addison, was perhaps the first poem that fixed his -reputation, and'gave him a foretaste of that immense popularity which he enjoyed during his whole life. It is to this period of his career that we must ascribe the concep- tion .and first sketch of the most charming production not only 184 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. of Pope, but of the century in which he lived ; a perfect gem, or masterpiece, equally felicitous in its plan and in its execution. This was the mock-heroic poem The Rape of the Lock, (172) justly described by Addison as " merum sal, a delicious little; thing," which is the victorious rival of Boileau's Lutrin, and is indeed incomparably superior to every heroic-comic composition that the world has hitherto seen. In 1713 appeared his pastoral eclogues entitled Windsor Forest, in which beauty of versifica- tion and neatness of diction do all they can to compensate for the absence of that deep feeling for nature which the poetry of the eighteenth century did not possess. The plan of this work is principally borrowed from Denham's Cooper's Hill. In 1715 he published several modernized versions from Chaucer, as if he were desirous in all things to parallel his great master Dryden. These consist of the not over moral story of January and May, which is in substance the Merchant's Tale, and The Prologiie to the Wife of Bath's Tale. The Temple of Fame is an imitation of the same poet's House of Fame. 324. At this time, too, Pope undertook the laborious enter- prise of translating into English verse the Iliad and the Odyssey. The work was to be published by subscription ; and Pope was at first reduced almost to despair when brought face to face with the vastness of his undertaking: but with practice came facility, and the whole of the Iliad was successfully given to the world by the year 1720. In a pecuniary sense this was a most success- ful venture ; Pope thereby laid the foundation of that compe- tence which he enjoyed with good sense and moderation. The Odyssey did not appear till five years later; and of this he him- self translated only twelve of the twenty- four books, employing for the remaining half the assistance of the respectable contem- porary poets WILLIAM BROOME (1689-1745) and ELIJAH FENTON (1683-1730), to whom he paid a proportionable share of the pro- ceeds. Mechanically this translation is far from unfaithful ; but in the spirit, the atmosphere, so to say, of the original, the bal- lad-like version of Chapman is far superior. Bentley's criticism is, after all, the best and most comprehensive that has yet been made on this work: "it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but j r ou must not call it Homer." It will nevertheless be always re- garded as a noble monument of our national literature. 325. Other compositions of Pope belonging to this early period of his life, are the Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, the Epistle A. D. 1688-1744. ALEXANDER POPE. 185 from Sappho to Phaon, borrowed from the Hcro'idcs of Ovid, and the Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, a poem on a similar plan, but taking its subject from the romantic and touching story of mediaeval times. These works, though somewhat artificial, ex- press a passion so intense, and are illustrated with such beautiful imagery, that they will ever be considered masterpieces. During this part of his life Pope was living, with his father and mother, to whom he always showed the tenderest affection, at Chiswick; but on the death of the former parent he removed with his mother to a villa he had purchased at Twickenham, on a most beautiful spot on the banks, of the Thames. Here he passed the remainder of his life, in easy, if not opulent circumstances; his taste for gardening, and his grotto and quincunxes in which he delighted, amused his leisure ; and he lived in familiar intercourse with almost all the most illustrious statesmen, orat6rs, and men of letters- of his day, Swift, Atterbury, Bolingbroke, Prior, Gay, and Arbuthnot. In 1725 he published ^.n Edition of Shakspeare, in six volumes, in the compilation of which he exhibited a de- ficiency in that peculiar kind of knowledge which is absolutely indispensable to the commentator on an old author. This work was but too justly criticised by Theobald in his Shakspeare Re- stored, an offence deeply resented by the sensitive poet ; and we shall see by-and-by how savagely he revenged himself. During the three following years he was engaged, together with Swift and Arbuthnot, in composing that famous collection of Miscel- lanies to which each of the friends contributed. The principal project of the fellow-laborers was the extensive satire^on the abuses of learning and the extravagances of philosophy, Entitled Memoirs of Martinus Scriblcrus. Pope's admirable satiric genius, however, would seem to have instantly deserted him when he abandoned verse for prose; and perhaps, with the ex- ception of Arbuthnot's inimitable burlesque History of John Bull, these Miscellanies are hardly worthy the fame of their au- thors. 32G. The brilliant success of Pope, his steady popularity, the tinge of vanity and malignity in his disposition, and, above all, the supercilious tone in which he speaks of the struggles of lit- erary existence, raised around him a swarm of enemies, animated alike by envy and revenge. Determining, therefore, to inflict upon these gnats and mosquitos of the press a memorable cas- tigation, he composed in 1726 the satire of the Dunciad, the pri- 186 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. inarj idea of which mo y have been suggested by Dryden's Mao Fleckno, but which is incomparably the fiercest, most sweeping, and most powerful literary satire that exists in the whole range of literature. Most of the persons attacked are so obscure that their names are now rescued from oblivion by being embalmed in Pope's satire; but in the latter part of the poem, and particu- larly in the portion added in the editions of 1742 and 1743, the poet has given a sketch of the gradual decline of taste and learn- ing in Europe, which is one of the noblest outbursts of his genius. In the original form of the poem the palm of stupidity was given to Theobald; but in the new edition of 1743 the dis- tinction is transferred to the then poet laureate, Colley Gibber, an actor, manager, and dramatic author of the time, who, what- ever were his vices and frivolity, certainly was in no sense an appropriate King of the Dunces. But in this, as in numberless other instances, Pope's bitterness of enmity entirely ran away with his judgment. 327. In the four years extending from 1731 to 1735 Pope was engaged in the composition of his Epistles, addressed to Bur- lington, Cobham, Arbuthnot, Bathurst, and other'distinguished men. These poems, half satirical and half familiar, were in their manner a reproduction of the charming productions of Horace. At the same period was composed the Essay on Man, in four epistles, addressed to Bolingbroke, a work of more pre- tension, and aim-ing at the illustration of important ethical and metaphysical principles. (_Z7-1) This poem is an incomparable example of the highest skill in the art of so treating an abstract philosophical subject as to render it neither dry nor unpoetical. About the same time he gave to the world his highly-finished and brilliant Imitations of Horace, in which, like so many pre- vious writers of his own and other countries, from Bishop Hall down to Boileau, he adapted the topics of the Roman satirist to the persons and vices of modern times. 328. On the 3oth of May, 1744, this great poet died, unques- tionably the most illustrious writer of his age, hardly inferior to Swift in the vigor, the perfection, and the originality of his genius. As a man he was a strange mixture of selfishness and generosity, malignity and tolerance ; he had a peculiar tendency to indirect and cunning courses ; and his intense literary ambi- tion sometimes showed itself in personal and sometimes in literary meannesses and jealousies. Among his works few of A. D. 1667-1745. JONATHAN SWIFT. 187 any importance have been left unnoticed. We should perhaps mention his Eclogue of the Messiah, a happy adaptation of the Pollio of Virgil to a sacred subject, the Ode on St. Cecilia' s Day, in which he was bold enough to try his strength with Dryden, and, though defeated, yet without disgrace. He composed a considerable number of Epitaphs, some of which are remark- able as exemplifying his consummate skill in the art of paying a compliment, one of the most perfect instances of which is in the closing lines of the Epitaph on young Harcourt. But per- haps the most inimitable of Pope's productions is the Rape of the Lock, (172) the subject of which is the rather cavalier frolic of Lord Petre, a man of fashion at the court of Queen Anne, in cutting off a lock of hair from the head of Arabella Fermor, a beautiful young maid of honor. This incident Pope treated with so much grace and delicate mock-heroic pleasantry, that on consulting Addison on the first sketch of the poem, the latter strongly advised him to refrain from altering a " delicious little thing," that any change would be likely to spoil. Pope, however, fortunately for his glory, incorporated into his poem the delicious supernatural agency of the Sylphs and Gnomes, beings which he borrowed from the Rosicrucian philosophers ; the action of which miniature divinities is exquisitely propor- tioned to the frivolous persons and events of the poem. 329. The most original genius as well as the most striking character of this period was JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745), who occupies a foremost place in the literary and political history of the time. (174-176) He was born in Dublin, in 1667, of Eng- lish family and descent; but his father having died in embar- rassed circumstances, Swift, a posthumous child, becam,e a dependent upon the charity of relations. He passed three years of his infancy in England, and was afterwards sent to a school at Kilkenny, whence he proceeded, in 1682, to Trinity College, Dublin. Here he occupied himself with irregular and desultory study, and at last received his degree with the unfavor- able notice that it was conferred " speciali gratia," indicating that his conduct had not satisfied the academical authorities. In 1688 he entered the household of Sir William Temple, a distant connection of his family ; in whose service he remained as secre- tary and literary subordinate for some years. Temple was fre- quently visited and consulted by King William, who is said to have offered Swift a commission in a troop of horse, and taught him 188 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. the Dutch way of cutting and eating asparagus. Swift's residence at Moor Park continued down to Temple's death in 1699, with, however one interruption in 1694, when he entered into holy orders on the Irish Church establishment, having obtained the small pre- ferment of Kilroot. This temporary absence was caused by a quarrel with his patron, whose supercilious condescension his haughty spirit could not brook. During this period of his life he was industriously employed in study; and steady and exten- sive reading corrected the defects of his earlier education. On Temple's death he became the literary executor of his patron, and prepared for the press the numerous works he left; which he presented, with a preface and dedication written by himself, to William III. 330. Failing to obtain any preferment from that sovereign, Swift went to Ireland in 1699 as chaplain to Earl Berkeley, the Viceroy; and received the small livings of Laracor and Rath- beggan, altogether amounting to about four hundred pounds a year. At Laracor he lived till 1710, amusing himself with gar- dening, and with repairing his church and parsonage, and mak- ing yearly visits to England, where he became the familiar companion of the most illustrious men of the time, Halifax, Godolphin, Somers, and Addison. His connection with Wil- liam III. and Temple, as well as the predominance at that moment of Whig policy, naturally caused Swift to enter public life under the Whig banner, under which all these great states- men fought. And itwas in the interests of this party that he wrote his first work, the Dissensions in Athens and Rome, a political pamphlet in favor of the Whig ministers who were impeached in 1701. 331. But his first important works were the The Battle of the Books and the Tale of a Tub, which were published in 1704. The latter is a savage and yet exquisitely humorous pasquinade ridiculing the Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and for the exaltation of the High Anglican party, the three churches being impersonated in the ludicrous and not very decorous adventures of his three heroes, Peter, Jack, and Martin. The Battle of the Books, though first published in 1703, appears to have been writ- ten as early as 1697, to support his patron, Sir William Temple, in the celebrated Boyle and Bentley controversy on the letters of Phalaris. This dispute, originating in a mere personal squabble with Bentley (who had been, though unjustly, accused A. D 1667-1745. JONATHAN SWIFT. 189 of 'discourtesy in his capacity of librarian to the University of Cambridge), arose out of the then violently-contested question of the relative superiority of the Ancients and the Moderns, which was first started in England by Sir William Temple in 1692. Swift became a champion of the Boyle faction, and in this work gave a striking foretaste of those tremendous powers of sarcasm and vituperation which made him the most formidable pamphleteer that ever existed. 332. But his advocacy of Whig principles, never very hearty, came to an end in 1710. His hopes of preferment in England were not fulfilled; and this was the more galling, as he had long regarded Ireland with a mixture of contempt and detestation, and was eager to escape from that country for ever. He accord- inglv unceremoniously abandoned his former party, and began to write, to intrigue, and to satirize, with even greater force, vehemence, and success, on the side of the Tories. 333. In this year, too, Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, and St. John, better known as the brilliant but unprincipled Bolingbroke, had reached the head of affairs. Swift was re- ceived with open arms; he became more useful to his present than he had ever been to his former party, and was caressed and flattered by the great, the fair, the witty, and the wise. He poured forth with unexampled rapidity squib after squib and pamphlet after pamphlet, employing all the stores of his une- qualled fancy and powerful sophistry to defend his party and to blacken and ridicule his antagonists. The great object of his ambition was an English bishopric, and the ministers would have been willing enough to gratify him ; but his authorship of the Tale of a Tub, and a lampoon of his on the Duchess of Som- erset, proved fatal to him, and he was obliged to content him- self with the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, to which he was nominated, to his extreme disappointment, in 1713. This was the most active period of Swift's life. His Public Spirit of the Whigs, his Conduct of the Allies, and his Reflections on the Bar- rier Treaty, the ablest political pamphlets ever written, not only reconciled the nation to the peace policy of the Tory ministry, but also kindled a feeling of enthusiasm for the Tory statesmen among the people. Evil days, however, were at hand. Harley and St. John tore asunder their party with their dissensions, and, in spite of all Swift's efforts, the breach became irremediable. St. John, combining with Mrs. Masham, the Queen's favorite, 190 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. succeeded in turning out Harley. But his triumph was short. The death of Anne and the accession of the Elector of Hanover recalled the Whigs to power. The ministry were accused of a plot for bringing back the Pretender; Oxford was committed to the Tower ; Bolingbroke fled beyond the sea ; and Swift retired to Ireland, where he was received with a universal yell of con- tempt and execration. 33-t. From 1714 to 1726 Swift resided constantly in Ireland, and from being an object of detestation raised himself to a height of popularity which has never been surpassed. The condition of Ireland was just then unusually deplorable; the manufactur- ing industry and the commerce of the country were paralyzed by the protective statutes of the English Parliament; while the agricultural classes were reduced to the lowest abyss of degrada- tion. In a pamphlet recommending to the Irish the use of their own manufactures, Swift boldly proclaimed the misery of the country; and his force and bitterness 'Soon drew down the per- secution of the Ministers. But the highest point of Swift's Irish popularity was attained by the seven famous letters which he wrote in 1724, signed M. B. Drapier (draper), and inserted in a Dublin newspaper. The occasion was the attempt, on the part of the English ministry, to force in Ireland the circulation of a large sum of copper money, the contract for coining which had been undertaken by William Wood, a Birmingham speculator. This money Swift endeavored to persuade the people was enor- mously below its nominal value; and he counselled all true patriots not only to refuse to take it, but to refrain from using any English manufactures whatever. The force of -his argu- ments, and the skill with which he wore his mask of a plain, honest tradesman, excited the impressionable Irish almost to frenzy. Swift was known to be the real author of the letters, and his defence of the rights of the Irish people made him from this moment the idol of that warm-hearted race. 335. In 1726 Swift once more visited England for the purpose of bringing out his famous Gullivers Travels, (175) which at once excited a universal burst of delight and admiration. The death of Stella, one of the few beings that he ever really loved, happened in 1728; and the loss of many friends further con- tributed to darken and intensify the gloom of this proud and sombre spirit. He had from an early period suffered occasion- ally from giddiness; and his fearful anticipations of insanity A. D. 1GG7-1743. JONATHAN SWIFT. 191 were destined to be cruelly verified. In 1741 he was afflicted with a painful inflammation which necessitated restraint, and which gradually merged into a state of idiocy that lasted without interruption till his death in 1745. He is buried in his own cathedral of St. Patrick's; and over his grave is inscribed that terrible epitaph composed by himself, in which he speaks of resting " ubi sceva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit." 3oG. Any account of Swift would be imperfect without some mention of the two unhappy women whose love for him was the glory and the misery of their lives. While residing in Temple's family he became acquainted with Esther Johnson, a beautiful young girl, brought up as a dependent in the house, to whom, while hardly in her teens, Swift gave instruction ; and the bond between master and pupil ripened into the deepest and tenderest passion on the part of both. On his removal to Ireland, Swift induced Stella such was the poetical name he gave her to settle with her friend Mrs. Dingley in that country, where he maintained with both of them that long, curious, and intimate correspondence which has since been published as his Journal to Stella. The journal is full of the most affectionate aspirations after a tranquil retreat in the society of " little M. D. ; " and there can be hardly any doubt that Swift anticipated marrying Stella, while Stella's whole life was filled with the same hope. During one of his visits to London, Swift became intimate with the family of a rich merchant named Vanhomrigh, whose daugh- ter Hester, to whom he gave the name of Vanessa, he uncon- sciously succeeded in inspiring with a deep and intense passion, which the difference of age only makes more difficult to explain. On the death of her father, Miss Vanhomrigh, who possessed an independent fortune, retired to a villa at Celbridge in Ireland, where Swift continued his visits, but without clearing up to one of these unhappy ladies the nature of his relations with the other. At last Vanessa, driven almost to madness by suspense and irritation, w T rote to Stella to inquire into the nature of Swift's position with regard to her. The letter was given by Stella to Swift, and brought back by him and thrown down without a word, but with a terrible countenance, before poor Vanessa, who died a few weeks afterwards (1723). Swift, however, was already in ail probability the husband of Stella; in 1716, it is said, the ceremony of marriage was privately performed in the garden of the Deanery, though Swift never either recognized her in public, I 192 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. or changed his strange rule of never living in the same house with her, or even seeing her otherwise than in the presence of a third person. 337. The greatest and most characteristic of Swift's prose works is the Voyages of Gulliver, (175} a vast and all embra- cing satire upon humanity itself, though many of the strokes were at the time intended to allude to particular persons and contemporary events. This admirable fiction consists of four parts or voyages : in the first Gulliver visits the country of Lilli- put, whose inhabitants are about six inches in stature, and where all the objects, houses, trees, ships, and animals, are in exact proportion to the miniature human beings. The invention displayed in the droll and surprising incidents is as unbounded as the natural and bona-fide air with which they are recounted; and the strange scenes and adventures are recorded with an air of simple straightforward honesty altogether inimitable. The second vogage is to Brobdingnag, a country of enormous giants, about sixty feet in height; and here Gulliver plays the same part as the pigmy Lilliputians had played to him. As in the first voyage, the contemptible and ludicrous side of human things is shown, by exhibiting how trifling they would appear in almost misroscopic proportions, so in Brobdingnag we are made to perceive how odious and ridiculous would appear our politics, our wars, and our ambitions, to the gigantic perceptions of a more mighty race. The third part carries Gulliver to a series of strange and fantastic countries. The first is Laputa, a flying island, inhabited by philosophers and astronomers; whence he passes to the Academy of Lagado ; thence to Glubbdubdrib and Luggnagg; which latter episode introduces the terrific descrip- tion of the Struldbrugs, wretches who are cursed with bodily im- mortality without preserving at the same time their intellects or their affections. 338*. Gulliver's last voyage is to the country of the Houyhn- hnms, a region in which horses are the reasoning beings ; and where men, under the name of Yahoos, are degraded to the rank of noxious, filthy, and unreasoning brutes. The satire goes on deepening as it advances; playful in the scenes of Lilliput, it grows bitterer at every step, till in the Yahoos it reaches a pitch of almost insane ferocity, which there is but too much reason to believe faithfully embodied Swift's real opinion of his fellow- creatures. A. D. 1667-1745. JONATHAN SWIFT. 193 339. Besides the purely political pamphlets already mentioned, Swift wrote many others of a partly religious character, such as his Sentiments of a Church of England Man, his remarks on the Sacramental Test, and a multitude of others, which being written on local and temporary subjects, are now little consulted ; but they all exhibit the vigor of his reasoning, the admirable force and directness of his style, and his unscrupulous ferocity of invective. Of all his occasional productions it may be said, that they are party pamphlets of the most virulent kind, in which the author was never restrained by any feeling of his own dignity, or of candor and indulgence for others, from overwhelm- ing his opponents with ridicule and abuse. Many of his smaller prose writings are purely satirical, as his Polite Conversation and Directions to Servants. In the former he has combined in a sort of comic manual all the vulgar repartees, nauseous jokes, and selling of bargains, that were at that time common in smart conversation ; and in the latter, under the guise of ironical pre- cepts, he shows how minute and penetrating had been his obser- vations of the lying, pilfering, and dirty practices of servants. Perhaps the pleasantest, as they are the most innocent, of his prose pleasantries, are the papers written in the character of Isaac Bickerstafif, (174:} where he shows up, with exquisite drollery, the quackery of the astrologer Partridge. His letters are very numerous ; and those addressed to his intimate friends, as Pope and Gay, and those written to Sheridan, half-friend and half-butt, contain inimitable specimens of his peculiar humor. 340. Swift will hot only be ever regarded as one of the great- est masters of English prose, but his poetical works will give him a prominent place among the writers of his age. Yet they have no pretension to loftiness of language, but are written in the sermo pedestris, in a tone studiously preserving the familiar expression of common life. In nearly all of them Swift adopted the short octo-syllable verse that Prior and Gay had rendered popular. The poems show the same wonderful acquaintance with ordinary incidents as the prose compositions, the same in- tense observation of human nature, and the same profoundly misanthropic view of mankind. The longest of the narrative writings, Cademis (Decanus, an anagram indicating the Dean himself) and Vanessa, is at the same time the least interesting. It gives an account, though not a very clear one, of the love- 194 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. episode which terminated so fatally for poor Hester Vanhomrigh. The most likely to remain popular are the Verses on my own Death, describing the mode in which that event, and Swift's own character, would be discussed among his friends, his ene- mies, and his acquaintances j and perhaps there is no composi- tion in the world which gives so easy and animated a picture, at once satirical and true, of the language and sentiments of ordi- nary society.. He produced an infinity of small pleasantries, in prose and verse; as, for example, The Grand Question Debated, in which he has, with consummate skill and humor, adopted the maundering style of a vulgar servant-maid. Many of his verses are slight toys of the fancy, but they are toys executed with the greatest perfection ; and in some, as the Legion Club, the verses on Bettesworth and on Lord Cutts, the ferocious satire of Swift is seen in its full intensity. 341. No member of the brilliant society of which Pope and Swift were the chief luminaries, deserves more respect, both for his intellectual and personal'qualities, than DR. JOHN ARBUTH- NOT (1667-1735). He was of Scottish origin, and enjoyed high reputation as a physician, in which capacity lie remained at- tached to the Court from 1709 till the death of Queen Anne, lie is supposed to have conceived the plan of that extensive satire on the abuses of learning, embodied in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, and to have indeed executed the best por- tions of that work, and in particular the description of the pe- dantic education given to his son by the learned Cornelius. It is entirely impossible, however, to distinguish between the dif- ferent contributions of the brilliant wits who formed the club. But the fame of Arbuthnot is more "intimately connected with the inimitable History of John Bull, in which the intrigues and Wars of the Succession are so drolly caricatured. The object of the work was to render the prosecution of the war by Marlborough unpopular with the nation ; but the adventures of Squire South (Austria), Lewis Baboon (France), Nic. Frog (Holland), 'and Lord Strutt (the King of Spain), are related with fun, odd hu- mor, and familiar vulgarity of language. Arbuthnot is always good-natured; and he shows no trace of that fierce bitterness and misanthropy which tinges every page of Swift. The char- acters of the various nations and parties are conceived and main tained with consummate spirit; and perhaps the popular ideal of John Bull, with which Englishmen are so fond of identifying A. D. 1664-1721 MATTHEW PRIOE. 195 their personal and national peculiarities, was first stamped and fixed by Arbuthnot's amusing burlesque. 342. MATTHEW PRIOR (1664-1721) was a poet and diploma- tist of this time, who played a prominent part on the stage of politics as well as on that of literature. {177) He was of humble origin ; but by the generous liberality of the splendid Dorset, he was enabled to pursue his studies at St. John's College, Cam- bridge, where he distinguished himself and obtained a small fellowship. He took part with Charles Montagu in the compo- sition of the Country Mouse and City Mouse, a poem intended to ridicule Dryden's Hind and Panther ; and the door of public employment was soon opened to him. After acting as Secre- tary of Legation at the Peace of Ryswick, he twice resided at Versailles in the capacity of envoy, and by his talents in nego- tiation, as well as by his wit and accomplishments in society, appears to have been very popular among the French. On re- turning to England he was made a Commissioner of Trade, and in 1701 became a member of the House of Commons. Though he had entered public life as a partisan of the Whigs, he now deserted them for the Tories, on the occasion of the impeach- ment of Lord Somers; and he again went to Paris, where he lived in great splendor during the negotiations in which Boling- broke acceded to the disgraceful Treaty of Utrecht. In 1715 he was ordered into custody by the Whigs, on a charge of high treason, and remained two years in confinement. But for his College Fellowship, which he prudently retained throughout the period of his prosperity, he would now have been reduced to entire poverty. Moreover, with the assistance of his friends, he published by subscription a collection of his works, the pro- ceeds of which amounted to a considerable sum. His longer and more ambitious poems are Alma, a metaphysical discussion carried on in easy Hudibrastic verse, exhibiting a good deal of thought and learning disguised under an easy conversational garb, and the Epic entitled Solomon, a poem somewhat in the manner, and with the same defects, as the Davideis of Cowley. A work of considerable length, and ambitious in its character, is the dialogue entitled Henry and Emma, modernized, and spoiled in the modernizing, from the exquisite old ballad of the Nutbro-ivne Maide. Prior's claim to admiration rests mainly upon his easy, animated, half-tender, half-libertine love-songs, exhibiting the union of natural though not profound sentiment with a sort of philosophic gayety. 196 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. 343. JOHN GAY (1688-1732) was one of those easy, amiable, good-natured men who are the darlings of their friends, and whose talents excite admiration without jealousy, while their characters are the object rather of fondness than respect. He entered life as a linendraper's shopman, but soon exchanged this occupation for a dependence upon the great, and for a vain pining after public employment, for which his indolent and self- indulgent habits rendered him singularly unfit. His most im- portant poetical productions at the beginning of his career were the collection of Eclogues entitled The Shepherd's Week*, origi- nally intended as a parody on the pastorals of Ambrose Philips, and the original and charmingly executed mock-didactic poem Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London. He has shown great address in applying the topics of Theocritus and Virgil to the customs, employments, and superstitions of Eng- lish peasants, and he has endeavored to heighten the effect by the occasional employment of antiquated and provincial expres- sions. The Trivia is interesting, not only for its ease and quiet humor, but for the curious details it gives us of the street sce- nery, costume, and manners of that time. Gay's dramatic pieces generally contained, or were supposed to contain, occasional political allusions, the piquancy of which greatly contributed to their popularity. His most successful venture was the Beggars' Opera, the idea of which is said to have been first suggested by Swift when residing, in 1726, at Pope's villa at Twickenham. The conception is eminently happy : it was to transfer the songs and incidents of the Italian Opera then almost a novelty in England, and in the blaze of popularity to the lowest class of English life. To use Swift's expression, it was a kind of New- gate pastoral, and was a sort of parody of the opera then in vogue, while it became the origin of the English Opera. It proved an unparalleled success ; and Gay acquired from the performance of his piece the very large sum of nearly seven hundred pounds. Encouraged by this he produced a kind of continuation called Polly, which, though far inferior, was even more profitable, for on its being prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain, the opposition party contributed so liberally to its publication that Gay is said to have cleared about eleven hundred pounds. After losing the bulk of his property in the South Sea mania, he was received into the family of the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, where he remained till his death A. D. 1681-1765. EDWARD YOUNG. 197 in 1732. He was the author of a collection of Fables in easy octosyllable verse, written to contribute to the education of William Duke of Cumberland, which still retain a kind of pop- ularity from their figuring in every collection of poetry for the young; {178} their style rendering them peculiarly adapted for reading and learning by heart. Gay's songs and ballads, whether those introduced into the Beggars' Ofera and other dramatic works, or those written separately, are among the most musical, touching, playful, and charming, that exist in the language. 344. Our space will only permit a cursory mention of SIR SAMUEL GARTH (died in 1719), a Whig physician of eminence, whose poem of The Dispensary, written on occasion of a squab- ble between the College of Physicians and the Apothecaries' Company, was half satirical and half a plea in favor of giving medical assistance to the poor; of THOMAS PARNELL (1679- 1718), a friend of Pope and Swift, (_/7#) who held a living in Ireland, and is known chiefly by his graceful but somewhat fee- ble tale of The Hermit, a versified parable founded on a strik- ing story originally derived from the Gesta Romanorum ; and of THOMAS TICKELL (1686-1740), celebrated for his friendship with the accomplished Addison, whose death suggested a noble elegy, the only work of Tickell which rises above the elegant mediocrity that marks the general tone of the minor poetry of that age. 345. EDWARD YOUNG (1681-1765) began his career in the unsuccessful pursuit of fortune in the public service. Disap- pointed in his hopes he entered the church : and serious domes- tic losses still further intensified a natural tendency to morbid and melancholy reflection. He obtained his first literary fame by his satire entitled the Love of Fame, the Universal Passion, written before he had abandoned a secular career. But Young's place in the history of English poetry is due to his striking and original poem The Night Thoughts. {ISO) This work, con- sisting of nine nights of meditations, is in blank verse, and is made up of reflections on Life, Death, Immortality, ar.d all the most solemn subjects that can engage the attention of the Christian and the philosopher. The general tone of the work is sombre and gloomy, perhaps in some degree affectedly so ; for the author perpetually parades the melancholy personal cir- cumstances under which he wrote, overwhelmed by the rapidly- 198 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XVIII. succeeding losses of many who were dearest to him ; and the reader can never get rid of the idea that the grief and desola- tion were purposely exaggerated for effect. The epigrammatic nature of some of his most striking images is best testified by the large number of expressions which have passed from his writings into the colloquial language of society, such as " pro- crastination is the thief of time," " all men think all men mortal but themselves," and a multitude of others. 346. The poetry of the Scottish Lowlands found an admirable representative at this time in ALLAN RAMSAY (1686-1758), born in a humble class of life, who was first a wigmaker, and after- wards a bookseller in Edinburgh. He was of a happy, jovial, and contented humor, and rendered great services to the litera- ture of his country by reviving the taste for the excellent old Scottish poets, and by editing and imitating the incomparable songs and ballads current among the people. He was also the author of an original pastoral poem, the Gentle (or Noble) Shepherd, which grew out of two eclogues he had written, de- scriptive of the rural life and scenery of Scotland. The complete work appeared in 1725, and consists of a series of dialogues in verse, written in the melodious and picturesque dialect of the country, and interwoven into a simple but interesting love-story. A.D. 1672-1719. JOSEPH ADDISON. % 199 CHAPTER XIX. THE ESSAYISTS. 347. THE class of writers who form the subject of this chapter are identified with the creation of a new and peculiar form of English literature, which was destined to exert a powerful and most beneficial influence on the manners and intellectual de- velopment of society. The mode of publication was periodical ; and a kind of journals made their appearance, many of them enjoying an immense popularity, combining a small modicum of public news with a species of short essay or lively dissertation on some subject connected with morality or criticism, and incul- cating principles of virtue in great, and good taste and politeness in small things. The first establishment of the periodical essay is due to Sir Richard Steele; but the most illustrious repre- sentative of this department of literature is JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719). This great writer and excellent man was the son of Lancelot Addison, a divine of some reputation for learning, and was born in 1672. (183-1S6) He was educated at the Charter-house, from whence he passed to Queen's and ultimately to Magdalen College, Oxford ; and here he distinguished him- self by the regularity of his conduct, the assiduity of his appli- cation, and his exquisite taste in Latin verse. His first essays in English verse, at the age of twenty-two, were some lines in praise of Dryden, followed by a eulogistic poem on the King (William III.). Addison continued his trial-flight, under Dry- den's wing, translating the greater part of the IVth Georgic of Virgil. Lord Somers procured for the rising neophyte a pension of three hundred pounds, which enabled him to travel in France and Italy; but the death of King William having deprived him of his pension, he returned t;o England ; and he passed some time in London, very poor in purse, but exhibiting that dignified patience and quiet reserve which made his character so estimable. But his period of obscuration was very brief. In 1704 the great Marlborough won the memorable victory of Blenheim ; Godol- 200 'ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XIX. phin, eager to see the event celebrated in some worthy manner, applied, on Halifax's recommendation, toAddison, and the poem of the Campaign was the result. The verses are stiff and artifi- cial enough ; but Addison, abandoning the absurd custom of former poets, who paint a military hero as slaughtering whole squadrons with his single arm, places the glory of a great gen- eral on its true basis power of conceiving and executing pro- found intellectual combinations, and calmness and imperturbable foresight in the hour of danger. From this moment the career of Addison was a brilliant and successful one. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State, and afterwards Chief Secretary for Ireland ; besides which high posts he at different times received various other places both lucrative and honorable. The publi- cation of the Campaign had been followed by that of his Trav- els in Italy, exhibiting proofs not only of Addison's graceful scholarship, but also of his delicate humor, his benevolent morality, and his deep religious spirit. In 1707 he gave to the world his pleasing and graceful opera of Rosamond ; and about this time he in all probability sketched the comedy of the Drum- mer, which however was not published till after his death, when it was brought out by his friend Steele, who is said to have had some share in its composition. 348. It was in the year 1709 that Addison embarked in that remarkable literary venture, the Spectator, (183} first launched by Steele, a short account of whom will not perhaps be out of place here. SIR RICHARD STEELE (1675-1729) was of Irish origin, and as the school-fellow of Addison, had come to regard him with the deepest veneration and love. (180} Passionately fond of pleasure, and always ready to sacrifice his own interest to the whim of the moment, he caused himself to be disinher- ited for enlisting in the Horse-Guards as a private ; and when afterwards promoted to a commission, he wrote a moral and re- ligious treatise entitled the Christian Hero, breathing the loftiest sentiments of piety and virtue. Being an ardent partisan pam- phleteer, he was rewarded by Government with the place of Gazetteer, which gave him a sort of monopoly of official news at a time when newspapers were still in their infancy. In 1709 he determined to profit by the facilities this post afforded him, and to found a new species of periodical which should combine ordi- nary intelligence with a series of light and agreeable essays upon topics of universal interest, likely to improve the taste, the man- A. D. 1675-1729. RICHARD STEELE. 201 ners, and the morals of society. To this he gave the name of the Tatlcr, (182) a small sheet which appeared thrice a week at the cost of a penny, each number containing a short essay, gen- erally extending to about a couple of octavo pages, and the rest filled up with news and advertisements. Addison, who was in Ireland as the time, did not at first take any part in the project; and the work had already gone through several nnmbers be- fore he even became aware that Steele was the principal au- thor; but on learning the fact, he gave him valuable assistance, and the extent of his later contributions is well known. After a fairly successful run of almost two years, it was succeeded by the more celebrated Spectator, which was carried on upon the same plan, with the difference that it appeared every day, and reached five hundred and fifty-five numbers before it was discon- tinued. A third journal, the Guardian, was commenced in 1712, and reached one hundred and seventy-five numbers, but was strikingly inferior to the Spectator both in talent and success. On its failure the old Spectator was resumed, but never got be- yond the eightieth number. Though master of a singularly ready and pleasant pen, Steele was of course obliged to obtain as much assistance as he could from his friends ; and many wri- ters of the time furnished hints or contributions Swift, Berke- ley, Budgell, and others. But the most constant and powerful aid was supplied by Addison, who to the Tatler contributed about one sixth, to the Spectator nearly one half, and to the Guardian one third of the whole quantity of matter. Steele died at Caermarthen, in Wales, in 1729. 349. In 1713 Addison brought out his tragedy of Cato, (185) which, from many causes, partly political, and partly personal, enjoyed an enormous popularity. It is a solemn, cold, and pom- pous series of tirades in the French taste, and is written in scru- pulous adherence to the classical unities ; but the intrigue is totally devoid of interest, and the characters are mere frigid embodiments of patriotic and virtuous rhetoric. In 1716 he mar- ried the Dowager Countess of Warwick, to whose son he had in former days been tutor ; but this union does not seem to have added much to his happiness. He then took up his residence in Holland House, to which historic abode he has bequeathed the glory of his presence. Neither as a member of the House of Commons, nor as a Government official, can Addison be said to have won any great distinction : his invincible timidity prevented 202 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XIX. him from speaking with effect; and his powers of conversation quite deserted him in the presence of more than one or two hear- ers. To this may be ascribed the most marked blemish in his character, for to conquer his natural diffidence, and to give flow and vivacity to his ideas, he had recourse to wine. We must not forget, however, that excessive drinking was rather the fashion, than regarded as the vice, of the age in England. 350. In 1717 Addison reached the highest point of his politi- cal career; he was made Secretary of State, and in this eminent position exhibited the same liberality, modesty, and genuine public spirit, that had characterized his whole life. Even in his political journals, the Freeholder and the Examiner, he never departed from a tone of candor, moderation, and good breeding, which he was almost the first to introduce into political discus- sion. He did not retain his post of Secretary of State for a long period ; but soon retired, with a handsome pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year, and determined to devote the evening of his days to the composition of an elaborate work on the evi- dences of the Christian religion. In this task he was interrupted by death, which cut short his career in 1719. His celebrated quarrel with Pope was of too complicated a nature to be de- scribed here; but however painful it may be to find the highest spirits of the age embittered against each other, we can hardly regret it, for we owe to it one of the finest passages of Pope's works, the unequalled lines drawing the character of Atticus, which was unquestionably meant for Addison. Of all the accu- sations so brilliantly launched against him, Addison might plead guilty to none save the very venial one of loving to surround himself with an obsequious circle of literary admirers ; but the blacker portions of the portrait are traceable to the pure malig- nity of the sparkling satirist. 351. It is the prose portion of Addison's works which gives him the right to the very high place he holds in the English Literature of the eighteenth century; and among them, almost exclusively those Essays which he contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian. The immense fertility of invention displayed in these charming papers, the variety of their subjects, and the singular felicity of their treatment, will ever place them among the masterpieces of fiction and of criticism. Their variety is indeed extraordinary. Nothing is too high, nothing too low, to furnish matter for amusing and yet profitable reflec- A. D. 1672-1719. ADDISON. 203 tion ; from the patched and cherry-colored ribbons of the ladies to the loftiest principles of morality and religion, everything is treated with appropriate yet unforced appositeness. Addison was long held up as the finest model of elegant yet idiomatic English prose; and even now the student will find in him some qualities that never can become obsolete a never-failing clear- ness and limpidity of expression, and a singular harmony between the language and the thought. To Steele is due the invention of the Club in the Spectator, consisting of representa- tives of the chief classes of town and rural society. Thus we have Sir Andrew Freeport as the type of the merchants, Cap- tain Sentry of the soldiers, Sir Roger de Coverley of the old- fashioned country-gentlemen, and Will Honeycomb of the men of fashion and pleasure ; while linking them all together is Mr. Spectator himself, the short-faced gentleman, who looks with a somewhat satirical yet good-humored interest on all that he sees going on around him. The inimitable personage of Sir Roger de Coverley is a perfectly finished picture, worthy of Cervantes or of Walter Scott ; and the manner in which the foibles and the virtues of the old squire are combined is a proof that Ad- dison, who added most of the subtile strokes to the character, possessed humor in its highest and most delicate perfection. And the inimitable sketches of his dependants, the chaplain, the butler, and Will Wimble, the poor relation all these traits of character and delicate observation of nature must ever place Addison very high among the great painters of human nature. 352. Addison's poetry, though very popular in 'his own time, has since fallen in public estimation to a point very far below that occupied by his prose. The songs in Rosamond are pleas- ing and musical ; and, had Addison continued to write in that manner, he would undoubtedly have left something which rival authors would have found it very difficult to surpass. His Hymns not only breathe a fervent and tender spirit of piety, but are in their diction and versification stamped with great beauty and refinement; especially the verses beginning, "When all Thy mercies, O my God," and the well-known adaptation of the noble psalm, "The Heavens declare the Glory of God." The earlier and more ambitious poems of Addison, even including the once-lauded Campaign, have little to distinguish them from the vast mass of regular, frigid, irreproachable composition popular in that time. 204 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XIX. 353. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE (1628-1698), whose name is more famous in politics than in literature, produced a number of graceful though superficial Essays, which were extravagantly lauded at a time when the rank of a writer much increased the public admiration of his works ; but which are now read with interest principally on account of their easy good sense, and the agreeable style in which they are written. One of these, that on Ancient and Modern Learning, will long be remembered as having originated the notorious controversy respecting the authenticity of the "Epistles of Phalaris." Even in letter- writing, said Temple, the Ancients are superior to the Moderns; witness the epistles of Phalaris, which are still unapproached and unapproachable. {187} A new edition of these invaluable productions was published by the Christ-Church Wits, contain- ing a severe reflection on Bentley, the great scholar; who, stung by the injustice of the attack, replied with an argument to prove the spuriousness of these much-lauded letters. Thus began the great Boyle and Bentley Controversy ; which terminated in the complete triumph of Bentley. 354. No name among the brilliant circle which surrounded Pope and Swift, is more remarkable than that of BISHOP ATTER- BURY (1662-1732). A Tory and Jacobite of the extreme Oxford type, he played a prominent part both on the political and liter- ary scene. He was a man of great intellectual activity, of con- siderable, though by no means profound learning, and of a violent, imperious, and restless temper. He took an active part in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley, and was for a time considered, by the people of fashion who knew nothing of the subject, to have completely demolished the dull, ill-bred Cambridge pedant. He was the principal author of the reply written in the name of Boyle, whose tutor he had been at Christ Church, of which illustrious college Atterbury was for some time Dean. He was in 1713 raised to the see of Rochester, and be- came conspicuous not only as a controversialist, but for the force and eloquence of his speeches in Parliament. His plot for the restoration of the exiled Stuarts, his banishment in 1723, and the remaining events of his feverish life, belong to the history of the country. The private and personal side of Atterbury's character is far more attractive and respectable than his public conduct. His friendship for Pope was tender and sincere ; and he was not "only the great poet's most affectionate companion, A. D. 1671-1751. SHAFTESBURY. BOLINGBROKE. 205 but guided him with wise and valuable literary counsel. His taste in literature appears to have been sound ; and the intense admiration he always showed for the genius of Milton is the more honorable to his judgment, as his extreme Tory opinions must have made it difficult for him to sympathize with the Puritan and Republican poet. 355. LORD SHAFTESBURY (1671-1713), grandson of the famous chancellor, and pupil of Locke, stands very high both as a mor- alist and metaphysician, and also as an elegant and classical model of English prose. His collected works bear the title of Characteristics, and may still be read with interest. Shaftes- bury's style is refined and regular, though somewhat ambitious and finical; but he sometimes, as in his dialogue entitled the Moralists, (188} rises to a lofty height of limpid eloquence. His delineations of character show much acuteness and observa- tion, and have obtained for him the honor of comparison with La Bruyere, to whose neat antithetical mode of portrait-painting the thoughts and language of Shaftesbury bear no inconsidera- ble resemblance. 350. HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE (1678-1751), remarkable fo'r his extraordinary career as a statesman and ora- tor, was a prominent member of the brilliant coterie of Pope and Swift. After many strange vicissitudes, he amused the declin- ing years of life in the composition of many political, moral, and philosophical essays. One of these, the Idea of a Patriot King, (190) he gave in MS. to Pope, and exhibited great anger when he discovered, after the poet's death, that the latter had caused a large impression to be printed, contrary to a solemn promise. Of his other works, his Letter to Sir William Wind- ham in defence of his political conduct, and his Letters, on the Study and Use of Plistory, (189~) are the most important. The language of Bolingbroke is lofty and oratorical ; but the tone of philosophical indifference to the usual objects of ambition gen- erally strikes the reader as affected. It was to Bolingbroke that Pope addressed the Essay on Man, and some of the not very orthodox positions maintained in that poem were borrowed from his brilliant writings. Bolingbroke's writings against revealed religion were bequeathed by him to his friend DAVID MALLET, an unbeliever, who .brought them out, together with Boling- broke's other works, in 1754. Mallet, who died in 1765, was himself an author, but is now chiefly known by his Ballads, of 206 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XIX. which William and Margaret is the most striking and beau- tiful. 357. The most celebrated work of BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670-1733) is the Fable of the Bees, a poem with notes, in which the author endeavors to prove that private vices may be public benefits; or, in other words, that the play of human pas- sions and propensities, however immoral some of them may be in the relations between man and man, works unconsciously to- wards the welfare of that complex body which we call society. His doctrines were vigorously assailed by the accomplished and almost ideally virtuous BISHOP BERKELEY (1684-1753), equally famous for the evangelic benevolence of his character and the acuteness of his genius, whose mind was ever full of projects for increasing the virtue and happiness of his fellow-creatures. As Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland, he presents one of the rare in- stances of a prelate, out of pure love for his flock and an unaf- fected contentment with his lot, obstinately refusing any further promotion. His writings are exceedingly numerous, and em- brace a wide field of moral and metaphysical discussion. (191} lie is one of the most brilliant, as well as one of the earliest maintainers of the extreme spiritualistic theory; and thus is in some degree an opponent of Locke. Berkeley frequently wrote in the form of dialogue; and one of the most characteristic and popular of his works is entitled The Minute Philosopher. In the connection between the physical and metaphysical branches of investigation, Berkeley's writings -occupy an important place: thus his Theory of Vision established several valuable facts ; and he drew conclusions from several striking phenomena, co-ncern- ing that subtile subject. In all his arguments his aim was to refute the materialists. 358. LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1690-1762) was the most brilliant letter-writer of this period, when Pope and many other distinguished men of letters assiduously cultivated the epistolary form of composition. She was the daughter of the Duke of Kingston, and celebrated, even from her childhood, as Lady Mary Pierrepont, for the vivacity of her intellect, her pre- cocious mental acquirements, and the beauty and graces of her person. Her education had been far more extensive and solid than was then usually given to women : her acquaintance with history, and even with Latin, was considerable, and her studies had been in some degree directed by Biehop Burnet. In 1712 A. D. 1G90-1762. LADY M. WORTLE7 MONTAGU. 207 she married Mr. Edward Wortley Montagu, a grave and satur- nine diplomatist, with whose character the sprightly and airy- woman of fashion and literature could have had nothing in com- mon. She accompanied her husband on his embassy to the court of Constantinople, and described her travels over Europe and the East in those delightful Letters which have given her in Eng- lish literature a place resembling that of Madame de Sevigne in the literature of France. (192} Admirable common sense, observation, vivacity, extensive reading without a trace of ped- antry, and a pleasant tinge of half-playful sarcasm, are the qualities which distinguish her correspondence. The style is perfection : the simplicity and natural elegance of the high- born and high-bred lady combined with the ease of the thorough woman of the world. The moral tone, indeed, is far from being high, for neither the character nor the career of Lady Mary had been such as to cherish a very scrupulous delicacy. But she had seen so much, and had been brought into contact with so manv remarkable persons, and in a way that gave her unusual means of judging of them, that she is always sensible and amusing. The successful introduction of inoculation for the smallpox is mainly to be attributed to the intelligence and courage of Lady Mary Montagu, who not only had the .courage to try the experi- ment upon her own child, but with admirable constancy resisted the furious opposition of bigotry and ignorance against the bold innovation. She was at one time the intimate friend of Pope, and the object of his most ardent adulation ; but a violent quar- rel occurred between them, and the spiteful poet pursued her for a time with an almost furious hatred. She is the Sappho of his satirical works 208 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. CHAPTER XX. THE GREAT NOVELISTS. 359. MOST departments of literature were cultivated earlier in England than that of Prose Fiction. We have, it is true, the romantic form of this kind of writing in the Arcadia of Sydney, and the philosophical form in the Utopia and the Atlantis ; but the exclusive employment of prose narrative in the delineation of" the passions, characters, and incidents of real life was first carried to perfection by a constellation of great writers in the eighteenth century, among whom the names of Defoe, Richard- son, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and Goldsmith, are the most brilliant luminaries. In England, where the genius of the na- tion is eminently practical, and where the immense development of free institutions has tended to encourage individuality of char- acter, and to give importance to private and domestic life, the literature of Fiction divided into two great but correlative branches, to which our language alone has given specific and distinct appellations the Romance and the Novel. Of the former the characters and incidents are of a lofty, historical, or supernatural tone ; the latter expresses a recital of the events of ordinary or domestic life, generally of a contemporary epoch. It is the latter department in which English writers, from the time of its first appearance in our literature -down to the present time, have encountered few rivals and no superiors. 360. The founder of the English Novel is DANIEL DEFOE (1661-1731), a man of extraordinary versatility and energy as a writer; for his complete works are said to comprise upwards of two hundred separate compositions. Of humble origin, he was educated for the ministry in a dissenting sect, but embraced a mercantile career, having at various periods carried on the busi- ness of a hosier, a tile-maker, and a woollen-draper. He carried his devotion to Protestant principles so far as to join the abor- tive insurrection under the Duke of Monmouth ; though from this danger he escaped with impunity. In spite of the pillory, A. D. 1661-1731. DANIEL DEFOE. 209 of fines and imprisonment, to which he was condemned more than once, he continued fearlessly to pour forth pamphlet after pamphlet, full of irony, logic, and patriotism. Among the most celebrated of his works in this class are his Trucborn English- man, a poem in singularly tuneless rhymes, but full of strong sense and vigorous argument, in which he defends William of Orange and the Dutch against the prejudices of his countrymen : the Hymn to the Pillory, and the famous pamphlet The Shortest }\ av with the Dissenters, written in 1702, in which, to show the folly and cruelty of the recent Acts persecuting the Sectarians, he with admirable sarcasm adopts the tone of a violent persecu- tor, and advises Parliament to employ the stake, the pillory, and the halter, with unrelenting severity. For this he was thrice pilloried, and lay in Newgate for more than a year, during which imprisonment he commenced the Review, a literary journal whichjmay be regarded as the prototype of our modern semi- political, semi-literary periodicals. It appeared thrice a week, and was written with great force and ready vigor of language. During the negotiations which preceded the union of Scotland to the British crown, he was employed as a confidential agent in Edinburgh, and acquitted himself with ability. 361. In 1719 Defoe published the first part of Robinson Crusoe, the success of which, among that comparatively humble class of readers which Defoe generally addressed, was instantaneous and immense. The primary idea of this famous work may have been derived from the authentic narrative of Alexander Selkirk. a sailor who had been marooned, as the term then was, by his captain on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez, where he passed several years in complete solitude. The intense interest of Robinson Crusoe arises partly from the simplicity and proba- bility of the events, the unforeseenness of many of which com- pletely annihilates the reader's suspicion of the truth of what he is perusing, and partly from the skill with which Defoe identifies himself with the character of his Recluse, who is always repre- sented as a commonplace man, without any pretensions to ex- traordinary knowledge or intelligence. It is perhaps somewhat injurious that this book is generally read when we are very young; for the impression it leaves upon the memory and the imagination are so deep and permanent that we do not return to the- work when increased intellectual development would make us better able to appreciate Defoe's wonderful art. The second 210 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. part, which the success of the first encouraged Defoe to produce, is inferior to the first; indeed, the moment the solitude of the island is invaded by more strangers than Friday, the charm is evidently diminished. Scott has well remarked that a striking evidence of Defoe's skill in this kind of fiction is the studiously low key, both as regards style and incidents, in which the whole is pitched. 3G2. Among Defoe's numerous other works of fiction may be mentioned the Memoirs of a Cavalier, supposed to have been written by one who had taken part in the great Civil War, which so far deceived even the great Lord Chatham that he cited it as an authentic narrative. A not less remarkable narrative is the Journal of the Great Plague in London, (193} where the im- aginary annalist, a respectable London shopkeeper a charac- ter which Defoe assumed with consummate skill describes the terrible sights of that fearful time. Nothing can exceed the vividness with which episodes of the city life during the great calamity are set before us ; and in some passages, as in the de- scription of the maniac fanatic Solomon Eagle, the Great Pit in Aldgate, and the long line of anchored ships stretching far down the Thames, Defoe rises into a very lofty and powerful strain of description. A number of stories the Adventures of Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, Roxana, Captain Singleton, show the same quiet power of imitating reality. In a remark- able tract he has described the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal to her friend Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury; and this is one of the boldest experiments ever made upon human credulity. It was composed to help oft" the sale of a dull book of Sermons, and had the effect of instantly causing the whole edition to quit the bookseller's shelves ; for Drelincourt on Death was power- fully recommended by the visitor from another world. 3G3. But SAMUEL RICHARDSON (1689-1761) must be regarded as the real founder of the romance of private life. He was born of very humble rustic parentage, and came to London when a lad to be apprenticed to a printer. In this calling he distin- guished himself by so much diligence that he gradually rose to the highest place in his business, having at last become the pur- chaser of a half share in the lucrative patent office of Printer to the King. Having accumulated an easy fortune, he retired to a pleasant suburban house at Parson's Green, near London, where he passed an honorable old age in literary employment, sur- A. D. 1689-1761. SAMUEL EICHARDSON. 211 rounded by a little knot of female worshippers, whose adulatory incense his intense vanity made him greedily receive. The works of Richardson are three in number : Pamela, published in 1741, Clarissa Harloiue, in 1749, and Sir Charles Grandison, in 1753. These three novels are all written upon one plan ; that is, the story is entirely told in letters which are supposed to be written by the various persons in the action, a mode of fictitious composition which is attended with advantages and disadvan- tages of a very evident kind. It was in any case eminently suited to the peculiar genius of Richardson, which is seen rather in the evolution of character by slow and delicate touches of self-betrayal, than by any vigor of description of persons or events. 364. Pamela describes the sufferings, trials, and vicissitudes undergone by a poor, but beautiful and innocent, country girl who enters the service of a rich gentleman. She triumphantly resists all the seductions, and all the violence by which he essays to overcome her virtue, and even the promptings of her own heart in his favor; for Richardson represents her as pas- sionately attached to her unworthy master, to whom, by way of a moral inculcating the reward of virtue, she is ultimately mar- ried. Pamela originally sprang from a collection of familiar letters which Richardson, at the request of his publishing firm, had undertaken to write as a manual to improve the style and the morality of the middle classes of readers : and while engaged on it he was struck with the happy idea of making his letters tell a continuous story* The popularity of the work was so great that five editions were exhausted in one year; although this, like all Richardson's works, is extremely voluminous. 365. Clarissa Harloive is incontestably Richardson's greatest work. Whether we consider the interest of the story, the variety and truth of the characters, or the intense pathos of the catas- trophe, to which every incident artfully leads, we must not only accord it a decisive superiority over his other productions, but must give it one of the foremost places in the history of prose fiction. It is the story of a young lady who falls a victim to the treachery and profligacy of a man of splendid talent and attrac- tions, but of complete and almost diabolical corruption. Though Richardson, both by natural disposition and circumstances, is far more successful in the delineation of female than of male characters, Lovelace, the seducer, is one of the most perfect and 212 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. finished portraits that literature has to show. There is no better proof of this than the fact that the name has become in all lan- guages the sjnonjme of the brilliant and unprincipled seducer; which circumstance also gives us a record of the immense popu- larity which Richardson still enjoys throughout Europe. 366. The last work in this famous trilogy is Sir Charles Grandison, in which the author, who never relinquished the idea of incorporating amoral in his fictions, intended to give an ideal portrait of a character which should combine consummate ethical and religious perfection with the graces and accomplishments of a man of fashion. In his three successive novels Richardson essayed to portray three different orders in the social scale : in Pamela the lower, in Clarissa the middle, and in Grandison the aristocratic class of society. But he was, from education and position, totally unacquainted with the real manners and modes of thought and feeling prevalent in the fashionable world; and in describing what he so imperfectly guessed at he fell into the error natural to men of imperfect education and in- experienced in the manners of the great world. He is perpetu- ally straining after fine language, which forms a ludicrous contrast with the really easy unaffected tone of the higher circles. It is said that Richardson consulted a great lady as to the tone and language of high life; and that she found so many errors and inconsistencies that he abandoned in despair the hope of correcting them. The distinguishing characteristics of Rich- ardson are patient analysis of the human mind and passions, particularly in the female sex, a tendency to accumulate minute incident and microscopic description, and a sickly and morbid tone of sentiment, combined with a pathetic force rarely found in writers of any nation. 367. The second great name among the novelists of this period is that of HENRY FIELDING (1707-1754), qualified by Byron as " the prose Homer of human nature." In his personal character, as well as in his literary career, in everything, indeed, but the power of his genius, he was the exact opposite of Richardson. Of noble birth, being a descendant of the illus- trious house of Denbigh, and son of General Fielding, he early in life succeeded to a ruined inheritance, and betook himself to the stage, becoming a dramatic author and a lively writer in the Covent Garden Journal. He produced a considerable number of pieces, now entirely forgotten, which show that his talent was A. D. 1707-1754. HENRY FIELDING. 213 in no way adapted to the theatre. His career for some years was a continuous struggle with fortune and his own extrava- gance. He married an excellent lady, and squandered her not inconsiderable portion; he speculated in the Haymarket Theatre, and failed utterly; he then tried the law, and was called to the bar, but without any immediate advantage. He also took an active part in political controversj r , and in numerous pamphlets and articles for journals maintained liberal and anti-Jacobita principles. But it was not until the year 1742 that he struck out that vein of humorous writing in which he never had, nor is ever likely to have, a rival ; when he produced his first novel, Joseph Andrews, which was in some sense intended as a parody or caricature, ridiculing the timid and fastidious morality, the shopkeeper tone and the somewhat preaching good-boy style of Pamela, just then in the full blaze of success. Fielding's novel at once received the honor due to a great original creation ; and in pretty rapid succession he produced his Journey front this World to the Next, full of political allusions that have now lost their piquancv, and his truly remarkable satirical tale The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great. In 1749 he was appointed to the laborious and then far from respectable post of a London policy magistrate : and while engaged in this occupation he composed the finest, completest, and profoundest of his works, the incom- parable Tom Jones; (104) which was followed after a brief interval by Amelia, in which he unquestionably intended to por- tray some of his own follies and irregularities, but with the prin- cipal object of paying a tribute to the virtues and affection of his first wife. Ruined in health by labor and excesses, he sailed for Lisbon in 1754; and after a short time died in that city, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery there towards the end of the same year. 368. The qualities which distinguish Fielding's genius are ac- curate observation of character, and an extraordinary power of deducing the actions and expressions of his personages from the elements of their nature, a constant sympathy with the vigorous unrestrained characters, in all ranks of society, but especially in the lowest, which he loved to delineate. In the construction of his plots he is masterly- That of Tom Jones is perhaps the finest example to be met with in fiction of a series of events probable yet surprising, each of which inevitably leads to the ultimate catastropl e. He combined an almost childish delight in fun 214 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. and extravagantly ludicrous incident, with a philosophic close- ness of analysis of character and an impressive tone of moral re- flection, the latter often masked under a pleasant air of satire and irony. His novels breathe a sort of fresh open-air atmos- phere, a strong contrast to the close artificial medium which per- vades the romances of Richardson. 309. The most attractive character in Joseph Andre-ws is Par- son Adams, one of the richest, most humorous, and truly genial conceptions of this great -artist. Adams's learning, simplicitv, and courage, together with his innumerable and always consis- tent oddities, make him as truly humorous a character as Sancho Panza himself. In the adventures of Jonathan Wild the Great the exploits of a consummate scoundrel are related in a tone cf ironical admiration; and the story contains some powerful and many humorous scenes. 370. In Tom Jones it is difficult to know what most to admire the artful conduct of the plot, the immense variety, truth, and humor of the personages, the gayety of the incidents, or the acute remarks which the author has copiously introduced. The character of Squire Western, the type of the violent, brutal rural magnate of those days, is one which remains for ever fixed on the memory. Tom Jones himself and the fair Sophy, though elaborated by the author with peculiar care, as types of all that he thought attractive, are tinged with much coarseness and vul- garity; but the time when Fielding wrote was remarkable for the low tone of manners and sentiment. 371. The interest of Amelia is entirely domestic and familiar: the errors and repentance of Captain Booth, and the inexhausti- ble love and indulgence of the heroine, are strongly contrasted. Fielding had little power over the pathetic emotions; there are, however, in this novel several episodes and strokes of character which are touching, and which exhibit that peculiar characteris- tic of truly humorous conceptions, namely, the power of touch- ing the heart while exciting the sense of the ludicrous. 372. TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT (1721-1771) was descended from an ancient and respectable family in Scotland. (195) Af- ter remaining a short time in the service of a medical practitioner in Glasgow, he proceeded to London when only nineteen years of age with the MS. of a tragedy, entitled the Regicide, in his pocket. Failing in his attempt to bring out this work he entered the naval service as surgeon's mate, and was present at the uu- A. D. 1721-1771. SMOLLETT. 215 fortunate expedition to Carthagena in 1741. Here he had the opportunity of studying the oddities of sea-characters, which he afterwards so admirably reproduced in his fictions, and of learn- ing by experience the atrocious cruelty, corruption and incom- petency which then reigned in the naval administration. In 1748 he began his career as a novelist with Roderick Random ; in which, as indeed in all his novels, he relied for success rather on a lively series of grotesque adventures than on any elabora- tion of intrigue or deep analysis of character. Peregrine. Pic- kle was published in 1751 ; and Smollett now devoted himself to the career of a writer and politician. In 1753 he produced his third great romance, The Adventures of Ferdinand, CoiDit Fathom, describing, with a higher moral intention than is usually found in his works, the career of an unprincipled scoun- drel, cheat, and swindler. A few years afterwards the violence of Smollett's political opinions brought him in collision with the law. He was prosecuted for an attack on Admiral Knowles, was fined one hundred pounds, and imprisoned for three months, during which time he continued the management of the Critical Review, and in his editorial capacity managed to raise up against himself a whole swarm of angry politicians, writers, and doctors. He now produced his novel of Sir Lancelot Greaves, a most unfortunate and feeble effort to adapt the plot and leading idea of Don Quixote to English contemporary life ; and wrote, with extraordinary rapidity, his History of England, of which the ardent and partial judgments are the most remarkable fea- tures. In a Tour in France and Italy, which he undertook to divert his grief under the loss of a beloved child, Smollett ex- hibits a painful and almost ludicrous incapacity to appreciate the beautiful, sublime, or interesting objects he met with; he " travelled from Dan to Beersheba, and found all barren." In a now-forgotten tale, The Adventures of an Atom, he attacked Bute, who had formerly been his patron. Completely broken in health by incessant labor and continual agitation, he at last re- tired to die at Leghorn; where, in spite of weakness, exhaus- tion, and suffering, the dying genius gave forth its most pleasing flash of comic humor. This was the novel of Humphrey Clinker, the only fiction in which Smollett adopted the epistolary form, and the most cordial, comic, and laughable of them all. 373. In the structure of his fictions Smollett is manifestly in- ferior to both Richardson and Fielding; his novels are simply a 216 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. series of striking, grotesque, farcical, and occasionally pathetic scenes, which have little other bond of union than the fact of their being threaded, so to saj, on the life of a single person. Yet his books are eminently amusing ; the reader's attention is kept awake by a lively succession of persons and events; some of which, though they may be coarse and low-lived, are invari- ably vivid and life-like. There can be no doubt that Smollett was frequently in the habit of transferring to his novels real adventures of his own life, which is specially true of his inimi- table and exquisitely varied sailor-characters, from Lieutenant Bowling and Ap Morgan in the first novel, through the rich gal- lery of oddities in his later works, particularly Commodore Trunnion and Pipes in Peregrine Pickle. As a rule his heroes have but little to attract the reader's sympathy, being generally hard, impudent, selfish, and ungrateful adventurers ; but in the subordinate persons, and especially in those of grotesque but faithful followers, like Strap or Pipes, Smollett shows a greater warmth of sentiment. In Humphrey Clinker, though running over with fun and grotesque incident, there is a riper and mel- lower tone of character-painting than is to be found in his pre- ceding works. The personages of Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble are inimitably carried out; the latter is indeed perhaps the most finished portrait in Smollett's whole gallery. 374. Smollett possessed considerable poetical talents. He wrote the powerful verses entitled the Tears of Scotland, which breathed the patriotic indignation of a generous mind, horror^ struck by the cruelties inflicted by the orders of the Duke of Cumberland after the battle of Culloden ; a poem equally hon- orable to his civil courage and to his genius. 375. LAURENCE STERNE (1713-1768), whose character was as eccentric as his works, was born in Ireland, but educated, with the assistance of some relations of his mother's at Cambridge. Entering the Church, he long held the living of Sutton, to which he afterwards added a prebend's stall in the Cathedral of York; and he was ultimately advanced to the rich living of Coxwold. The first two volumes of his novel of Tristram Shandy were published in 1761, and the novelty and oddity of his style instantly raised him to the summit of popularity; two more volumes appeared in the following year, and Sterne became for a time the pet and lion of fashionable London society. He made two tours on the Continent, the first in France, and the A. D. 1713-1768. STERNE. 217 second in France and Italy, where he accumulated the materials incorporated in his delightful Sentimental Journey, intended to form a part of his romance, but which is generally read 'as an independent work. In this book he personates his favorite char- acter Yorick, a mixture of the humorist and the sentimental observer. He died alone and friendless in a Bond-street lodging- house, attended in his last illness by mercenaries, who are said to have plundered him of such trifles as he possessed a com- fortless and gloomy ending, which he had himself desired. ' 376. His works consist of the novel of Tristram Shandy, of the Sentimentai Journey, and of a collection of Sermons, written in the odd and fantastic style which he brought into temporary vogue. Tristram Shandy, though nominally a romance in the biographical form, is intentionally irregular and capricious, the imaginary hero never making his appearance at all, and the story consisting of a series of sketches and episodes introducing us to the interior of an English country family, one of the rich- est collections of oddities that genius has ever delineated. The narrative is written partly in the character of Yorick (Sterne himself), supposed to be a clergyman and a humorist, and partly in that of the phantom-like Tristram ; and the most prominent persons are Walter Shandy, a retired merchant, the father of the supposed hero, his mother, his uncle Toby Shandy (a veteran officer), and his servant Corporal Trim. These are all conceived and executed in the finest and most Shakspearian spirit of humor, tenderness, and observation ; and they are supported by a crowd of minor yet hardly less individual por- traitures Obadiah, Dr. Slop, the Widow Wadman, Susanna, nay down to the " foolish fat scullion." Mr. Shandy, the rest- less crotchety philosopher, is delineated with consummate skill, and admirably contrasted with the simple benevolence and pro- fessional enthusiasm of the unequalled Uncle Toby, a personage belonging to the same category of creative genius as Sancho or as Parson Adams. In all Sterne's writings there is a great parade of obscure and quaint erudition, which tends powerfully to give an original flavor to his stvle. His humor and his pathos are often truly admirable ; and he possesses in a high degree that rare power, found only in the greatest humorists, of com- bining the ludicrous and the pathetic; though both his humor and his pathos are very often false and artificial. His episodes, as the often -quoted Story of Lc Ferre, (196) arc related with 218 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX, consummate art and tenderness; but in Sterne probably from his vanity and deficiency of discrimination there is no me- dium between excellence and failure. He is an acute and just observer of the little turns of gesture and expression, and makes his characters betray their idiosyncrasies by involuntary touches, just as men do in real life. 377. The most charming and versatile writer of the eighteenth century is OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774), whose works bear a peculiar stamp of gentle grace and elegance. (197-2OO) Born at the village of Pallas in the county of Longford, the son of a poor curate of English extraction, in 1745 he entered the University of Dublin in the humble quality of sizar. His career there was one of the strangest; and afteY many disheartening attempts to make his way into some honorable profession, he began those travels for the most part on foot, and subsisting by the aid of his flute and the charity given to a poor scholar which successively led him to Leyden, through Holland, France, Germany, and Switzerland, and even to Padua, where he boasted that he received a medical degree. In 1756 he found his way back to his native country ; and his career during about eight years was a succession of desultory struggles with famine ; some- times he acted as a chemist's shopman in London ; sometimes as an usher in boarding-schools; sometimes as a practitioner of medicine among " the beggars in Axe Lane," as he expressed it himself; but most generally as a bookseller's hack. His literary apprenticeship was passed in writing to order schoolbooks, tales for children, prefaces, indexes, and reviews of books ; and in con- tributing to the Monthly, Critical, and Lady's Review, the Brit- ish Magazine, and other periodicals. In this period of obscure drudgery he composed some of his most charming works, or at least formed that inimitable style which makes him the rival of Addison. He produced the Letters from a Citizen of the World, (107) the plan of which is imitated from Montesquieu's Lettres Persanes, giving a description of English life and manners in the assumed character of a Chinese traveller; a Life of Beau Nash ; and a short and gracefully narrated History of England, in the form of Letters from a Nobleman to his Son, the authorship of which was ascribed to Lyttelton. It was in 1764 that the publi- cation of his beautiful poem of the Traveller caused him to emerge from this slough of obscure literary drudgery ; and from this period Goldsmith's career was one of uninterrupted literary A. D. 1728-1774. OLIVER GOLDSMITH. 219 success, though his folly and improvidence kept him in constant debt. In 1766 appeared the Vicar of Wakefield, that masterpiece of gentle humor and delicate tenderness ; and in the following year his first comedy, the Goodnatured Alan, which compara- tively failed upon the stage in some measure from its very merits. In 1768 Goldsmith composed, as taskwork for the book- sellers, the History of Rome, distinguished by its extreme super- ficiality of information and want of research, no less than by enchanting grace of style and vivacity of narration. In 1770 he published the Deserted Village, the companion poem to the Traveller, writte'n in some measure in the same manner, and not less touching and perfect : and in 1773 was acted his comedy She Stoops to Conquer, one of the gayest, pleasantest, and most amusing pieces that the English stage can boast. Goldsmith was now one of the most popular authors of his time ; his society was courted by the wits, artists, statesmen, and writers, who formed a brilliant circle round Johnson and Reynolds ; and he became a member of the famous Literary Club. His unconquer- able improvidence, however, still kept him the slave of book- sellers, who obliged him to waste his exquisite talent on works hastily thrown off, and for which he neither possessed the requi- site knowledge nor could make the necessary researches ; thus he successively put forth as taskwork the History of Rngland, the History of Greece, and the History of Animated Nature, the two former works being mere compilations of second-hand facts, and the last an epitomized translation of Buffon. He died at the age of forty-six, deeply mourned by the brilliant circle of friends to which his very weaknesses had endeared him, and followed by the tears and blessings of many wretches whom his inex- haustible benevolence had relieved. i>78. In everything Goldsmith wrote, prose or verse, serious or comic, there is a peculiar delicacy and purity of sentiment, tingeing, of course, the language and diction as well as the thought. No quality in his writings is more striking than the union of grotesque humor with a sort of pensive tenderness which gives to his verse a peculiar character of gliding melody and grace. The two poems of the Traveller (J.99) and the Deserted Village (2OO*) will ever be regarded as masterpieces of sentiment and description. The light yet rapid touch with which, in the former, he has traced the scenery and the natural peculiarities of various countries, will be admired long after the 220 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XX. reader has learned to neglect the false social theories embodied in his deductions ; and in the latter the reader lingers over the delicious details of human as well as inanimate nature which the poet has combined into the lovely pastoral picture of " sweet Auburn." The touches of tender personal feeling which he has interwoven with his description are all characterized by a sweet pensive grace ; while, when the occasion demands, he can rise with easy wing to the height of even sublime elevation. 379. The Vicar of Wakefield, in spite of the extreme absurdi- ty and inconsistency of its plot, is one of those works that the world will not willingly let die. The gentle and quiet humor embodied in the simple Dr. Primrose, the delicate yet vigorous contrasts of character in the other personages, the atmosphere of purity, cheerfulness, and gayety, which envelops all the scenes and incidents, insure it immortality. Goldsmith's two comedies are written in two different manners, the Goodnaturcd Man being a comedy of character, and She Stoops to Conquer a comedy of intrigue. The merit of the first piece chiefly consists in the truly laughable personage of Croaker, and in the excel- lent scene where the disguised bailiffs are passed off on Miss Richland as the friends of Honeywood, whose house and person they have seized. But in She Stoops to Conquer we have a first- rate specimen of the comedy of intrigue, where the interest mainly depends upon a tissue of lively and farcical incidents, and where the characters, though lightly sketched, form a gal- lery of eccentric pictures. 380. Of Goldsmith's lighter fugitive poems the Haunch of Venison is a model of easy narrative and accurate sketching of commonplace society; and Retaliation consists of a series of slight yet delicate portraits of some of the most distinguished literary friends of the poet, thrown off with a hand at once re- fined and vigorous. A. D. 1711-1776. DAVID HUME. 221 CHAPTER XXI. HISTORICAL, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 381. IN accordance with that peculiar law which seems to gov- ern the appearance, at particular epochs, of several great names in one department of art or literature, like the sculptors of the Periclean age, the romantic dramatists in that of Elizabeth, and the novelists who appeared in England in the days of Richardson and Fielding, the eighteenth century was signalized by a re- markable wealth of historical genius, and gave birth to Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. 382. DAVID HUME (1711-1776) was born of an ancient Scot- tish family, and received his education in the University of Ed- inburgh. (2O3, 2O4) His desires and ambition were set upon literary fame, and after reluctantly trying the profession of law and the pursuit of commerce, he lived abroad some years, de- voting himself to the cultivation of moral and metaphysical science, and to the preparation of his mind for future historical labors. In 1737 he returned to England, and was so much dis- couraged with the coldness of the public towards his first moral and metaphysical productions, that he at one time meditated changing his name and expatriating himself for ever. In 1746 and the following year a gleam of success shone upon him ; he" entered the public service, and was employed as secretary to General St. Clair in various diplomatic missions. In 1752 he accepted the post of Librarian to the Scottish Faculty of Advo- cates, and there began his great work, the History of England from the accession of the Stuart Dynasty to the Revolution of 1688 ; to which he afterwards added in successive volumes the earlier history from the invasion of Julius Cssar to the reign of James I. Though far from successful at first, the work soon overcame the indifference of the public, and rapidly rose to the highest popularity. Hume's reputation was now solidly estab- 222 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXI. lished ; he accompanied as secretary the embassy of General Conway to Paris, where he became one of the lions of the fash- ionable society of the French capital. He fulfilled for a short time the still higher functions of Under-Secretary of State; and retiring- with a pension passed the evening of his life in philo- sophic tranquillity, enjoying the respect and affection which his virtuous and amiable qualities attracted, and which not even his scepticism could repel. He died in 1776. 383. As a moral and metaphysical writer Hume certainly de- serves a high place in the history of philosophy. (2O4^ The prominent feature of his Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1738, was the attempt to deduce the operations of the mind entirely from the two sources of impressions and ideas, which he looks upon as distinct, and his denying the existence of any fundamental difference between such actions as we call virtuous and vicious, other than as they are practically found to be con- ducive to or destructive of the advantage of the individual or the species. 384. The History of England is a book of very high value. In a certain exquisite ease and vivacity of narration it has cer- tainly never been surpassed; and in the analysis of character and the appreciation of great events Hume's singular clearness and philosophic elevation of view give him a right to one of the foremost places among modern historians. But its defects are no less considerable. Hume's indolence induced him to remain contented with taking his facts at second-hand from preceding writers, without troubling himself about accuracy. He shows a strong leaning to the Stuart dynasty, and even to the Catholic church as opposed to Protestantism ; for he belonged to the aristocratical section of the Scottish people, who were al- most uniformly Jacobites; and thus the sceptical reasoner was inclined from personal sympathies to opinions precisely con- trary to those which he might have been expected to maintain. 385. Contemporary with Hume was his countryman WILLIAM ROBERTSON (1721-1793), distinguished, like him, by the elo- quence of his narrative, by the picturesque power of delineating characters and events, and also by a singular dignity and purity of style. (2O5) As a Presbyterian pastor he was highly cele- brated for his eloquence in the pulpit; and in 1762 was elected Principal of the University of Edinburgh. He produced three great historical works, the History of Scotland, embracing the A. D. 1737-1794. EDWARD GIBBON. 223 reigns of the unfortunate Mary and her son James VI., down to the accession of the latter to the throne of England, the History of the Reign of Charles F., and the History of the Discovery, and first Colonization by the Spaniards, of America. In all of them we perceive a rich and melodious though somewhat artificial style, great though not always accurate research, and a strong power of vivid and pathetic description. Yet though many of the general disquisitions prefixed to or introduced in Robertson's history, are marked by largeness of view and lucidity of arrange- ment, his account of many episodes of the life of Charles V., and in particular that of his retirement to San Yuste, contains much of the romantic and theatrical inaccuracy which recent investigations have dispelled. But in spite of these defects Robertson's name will always retain an honorable place among the historians of England. 380. By far the greatest name in English historical literature is that of EDWARD GIBBON (1737-1794)- (2O6-2O9) Descended from an ancient family, he was born at Putney near London in 1737, and was the grandson of a merchant of large fortune. In consequence of his constitutional delicacy of health his educa- tion was at first neglected; but he gradually acquired an insatiable appetite for reading of all kinds, which at length con- centrated itself upon historical literature. At the early age of fif- teen he was placed at Oxford, where he remained only fourteen months. On his embracing the Catholic faith, while still at the University, his father sent him to Lausanne, where he was placed under the care of M. Pavillard, an eminent Swiss theolo- gian. He subsequently re-entered the Protestant Church; though his religious belief from this time forward was little more than a sort of philosophical Deism. In Switzerland, how- ever, he commenced that course of systematic study, which gradually filled his mind with immeasurable stores of sacred and profane learning : and here too he acquired that strong sympathy with French modes of thought that makes him the least national of all our great authors. Indeed the first-fruits of his pen actually appeared in French, an essay on the Study of Literature. Between 1763 and 1765 he travelled over France, Switzerland, and Italy; and w r hile at Rome in 1764, the idea of writing the history of the Decline and Fall of the mighty em- pire first flashed upon his mind. Returning to England in 1765 he set strenuously to work on the composition of his history, 224 ENGLISH LITEBATURE. CHAP. XXI. the first volume of which appeared in the following year, and was received not only with the applause of the learned, but with universal popularity among the fashionable world and the ladies. At various intervals until the year 1787 appeared the successive volumes, each of which excited the admiration and enthusiasm which the grandeur of the work was so calculated to inspire. 387. As member for Liskeard, Gibbon supported Lord North with a silent vote during the whole course of the American War, and was rewarded with the post of one of the Lords Commis- sioners of Trade, which he held till the abolition of the office in 1782. In 1783 Gibbon established himself at Lausanne in the comfortable house which he had purchased on the lovely shore of Lake Leman. This was perhaps the happiest part of his life : he was able to devote himself in tranquillity to his mightv task, and his leisure hours were enlivened with intellectual society. At length his residence at Lausanne becoming dis- agreeable in consequence of the agitation which followed the outbreak of the French Revolution, he returned to London in 1793 and died there in the following year. 388. His History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Em- pire is undoubtedly one of the greatest monuments of industry and genius. It embraces, exclusive of the introductory sketch of Roman history from the time of Augustus, a period of up- wards of thirteen centuries, that is, from about 180 to 1453 A. D. This immense space included not only the manhood and the de- crepitude of the Roman Empire, but the irruption of the Barba- rian nations, the establishment of the Byzantine power, the reorganization of the European nations, the foundation of the religious and political system of Mahomedanism, and tfie Cru- sades. Nor was the complexity of the subject less formidable than its extent : the materials for much of its treatment were to be painfully sifted from the rubbish of the Byzantine annalists, and the wild exaggerations of the Eastern chroniclers. From this immense chaos were to be deduced light, order, and regu- larity ; and the historian was to be familiar with the whole range of philosophy, science, politics, and war. Gibbon is one of the most dangerous enemies by whom the Christian faith was ever assailed he was the more dangerous because he was insidious. He does not formally deny the evidence upon which is based the structure of Christianity, but he indirectly includes that A. D. 1709-1784. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 225 system in the same category with the mythologies of paganism. But the accusations of having intentionally distorted facts or garbled authorities he has refuted in the Vindication in which he replied to his opponents; and the deliberate opinion of Guizot, whom no one can accuse of indifference to religion, will be conclusive as to Gibbon's merit on this point. His style is remarkably pompous, elaborate, and sonorous : originally arti- ficial, it had gradually become the natural garb of his thoughts. His descriptions of events, as of battles, of nations, of individ- ual characters, are wonderfully life-like and animated; and his chief sin against good taste is a somewhat too gorgeous and highly colored tone. His worst fault is a peculiar and most offensive delight in dwelling upon scandalous and immoral stories; and this tendency becomes doubly odious when ex- hibited in combination with Gibbon's solemn and majestic language. 389. Perhaps the most striking figure in the social and lit- erary history of this period is that of SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709- 1784). (21O-21&) He was the son of a learned but poor and struggling provincial bookseller in Lichfield; and he exhibited, from his very childhood, the same singular union of mental power and constitutional indolence, ambition and hypochondri- acal gloom, which distinguished him through life. On receiv- ing a promise of assistance from a neighboring gentleman, he carried to Pembroke College, Oxford, an amount of scholarship very rare at his age. Here he remained about three years ; but his father's affairs being in hopeless confusion, and the promises of assistance not being fulfilled, he was obliged to leave the University without a degree, and at his father's death entered upon the hard career of teacher in various provincial schools. Finally after unsuccessfully attempting to keep a school himself at Edial, near Lichfield, he began that tremendous struggle with labor and want, which continued during thirty years. His first literary undertaking was a translation of Father Lobo's Travels in Abyssinia ; but his hopes of success meeting with little but disappointment, he determined to launch upon the great ocean of London literary life. Already encumbered with a wife, a lady old enough to be his mother, without fortune, without friends, of singularly uncouth exterior, Johnson entered upon the career then perhaps at its lowest ebb of profit and respec- tability of a bookseller'* hack, or literary drudge. He ba- 22G ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXI. came a contributor to divers journals, and particularly to the Gentleman's Magazine, then carried on by its founder, Cave; and as an obscure laborer for the press he furnished criticisms, prefaces, translations, in short all kinds of humble literary work, and ultimately supplied reports of the proceedings in Parlia- ment, though the names of the speakers, in obedience to the law which then rendered it penal to reproduce the debates, were disguised under imaginary titles. He first emerged into popu- larity in 1738 by the publication of his London, an admirable paraphrase of the third satire of Juvenal, in which he adapts the sentiments and topics of the great Roman poet to the neg- lect of letters in London, and the humiliations which an honest man must encounter in a society where foreign quacks and na- tive scoundrels could alone hope for success. In 1744 he pub- lished the Life of Savage, that unhappy poet whose career was so extraordinary, and whose vices were not less striking than his talents. Johnson had known him well, and they had often wandered supperless and homeless about the streets at midnight. Indeed, no .literary life was ever a more correct exemplification of the truth of his own majestic line: "slow rises worth, by poverty depressed." 390. From 1747 to 1755 Johnson was engaged in the execution of his laborious undertaking, the compilation of his great Dic- tionary of the English Language, which long occupied the place among us of the Dictionary of the Academy in France and Spain. (2 IT) The etymological part of this great work, in consequence of Johnson sharing the then almost universal ignorance of the Teutonic languages, is totally without value; but the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the definitions, and above all, the interesting quotations adduced to exemplify the different senses of the words, render it a book that may always be read with pleasure. While engaged in this task he diverted his mind by the publication of the Vanity of Human Wishes, (210) a companion to his London, (215} being a sim- ilar imitation of the tenth satire of his Roman prototype. This is written in a loftier, more solemn and declamatory style than the preceding poem, and is a fine specimen of Johnson's digni- fied but somewhat gloomy rhetoric. Instead of the fall of Seja- nus, Johnson has introduced the no less impressive picture of the disgrace of Wolsey : and his episode of Charles XII. is no unworthy counterpart to the portrait of Hannibal. At about A. D. 1709-1784. SAMUEL JOHNSON. 227 the same time he brought out upon the stage the tragedy of Irene, which had long been in vain awaiting the opportunity of representation. Its success was insignificant, and indeed could not have been otherwise, for the plot of the piece is totally de- void of interest and probability; there is no discrimination of character, no painting of passion, and the work consists of a series of lofty moral declamations in Johnson's labored and rhetorical style. 301. Johnson founded, and carried on alone, two periodical papers in the style that Addison and Steele had rendered so popular. These were the Rambler (212} and the Idler, the former of which continued to be published from 1750 until 1752, and the latter from 1758 until 1760. The ease, grace, pleasantry, and variety which gave such charm to the Tatler and Spectator are totally incompatible with the heavy, antithetical, ponderous manner of Johnson ; and his good sense, piety, and sombre tone of morality are but a poor substitute for the mite ingenium and knowledge of the world displayed in his models. This species of periodical essay-writing, which exerted so powerful an influence on taste and manners in the eighteenth century, may be said to terminate with the Idler, though continued with gradually increasing want of originality by other writers. John- son's mother died in 17^9; and he wrote with extraordinary rapidity, and for the purpose of raising funds for her funeral, his once-celebrated moral tale, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. The manners and scenery of this storv are neither those of oriental, nor of any other known country, and the book is little else but a series of dialogues and reflections, embodying the author's ideas on an immense variety of subjects connected with art, literature, society, and philosophy, and his lofty, but gloomy and discouraging principles of ethics and religion. It was not till 1762, when the philosopher had reached the age of fifty-three, that he emerged from the constant poverty which had hitherto almost overwhelmed him, and against which he had so valiantly struggled. At the accession of George III. the Government hoped to gain. popularity by showing some favor to art and let- ters ; and Johnson was gratified by Lord Bute with a pension of three hundred pounds a year. He now found himself, for the first time in his life, placed above want, and was able to indulge not only his constitutional indolence, but that noble charity and benevolence which transformed his dwelling into a sort of asy- lum for helpless indigence. 228 ENGLISH LITEEATUEE. CHAP. XXL 392. At this period of his life Johnson became acquainted with JAMES BOSWELL (1740-1795), whose biography of the old sage is perhaps the most perfect and interesting account of a literary life and a literary epoch which the world has yet seen. Boswell was a young Scottish advocate of good family and fortune; and though he was a vain, tattling, frivolous busybody, his sincere admiration for Johnson won the old moralist's heart; and he has produced not only the most lively and vivid portrait of the person, manners, and conversation of Johnson, but the most ad- mirable picture of the society amid which he played so brilliant a part. Among the most celebrated social meetings of that age of clubs was the society founded by Johnson, and in which his friends Reynolds, Burke, Garrick, Bishop Percy, Goldsmith, Bennet Langton, Beauclerc, and others, were prominent figures. Johnson's powers of conversation were extraordinary; he de- lighted in discussion, and had acquired by constant practice the art of expressing himself with pointed force and elegance ; and his muscular and idiomatic expression formed an appropriate vehicle for his weighty thoughts, his apt illustrations, and his immense stores of reading and observation. This was perhaps the most brilliant and the happiest portion of his life. He made the acquaintance of the family of Thrale, a rich brewer and a member of the House of Commons, whose wife was equally famous for her own talents and for the bright intellectual society she loved to assemble round her, and under whose roof Johnson enjoyed all that friendship and respect, aided by great wealth, could give. This connection, which lasted for sixteen years, gave Johnson thejopportunity of frequenting refined society; and in the company of the Thrales he made several excursions to different parts of England, and once indeed as far as Paris. His edition of Shakspeare, which after many delays appeared in 1765, cannot be said to have added to his reputation; indeed, with the exception of an occasional happy remai-k, and a sen- sible selection from the commentaries of preceding annotators, it is quite unworthy of him. In 1773 Johnson undertook, in company with his friend Boswell, an expedition to the Heb- rides, (214-) which not only enabled him to make acquaintance with Scotland and the Scots, and thus to dissipate many of his old prejudices against the country and the people, but afforded him the opportunity of exercising his observation on a region entirely new to him. The volume in which he gives an account A. D. 1731-1797. EDMUND BURKE. 229 of his impressions contains many and interesting characteristic passages. His last work of any consequence, which is also un- questionably his best, was the Lives of the Poets, (213) originat- ing in the proposal made to him by several publishers that he should write a few lines of biographical and critical preface to the collected works of the English poets, of which they were pre- paring an edition. Johnson undertook the task, and performed it with such skill, and poured forth so abundantly the stores of his sound sense and acute reflection, that these lives are not only one of the most amusing books in the language, but contain, in spite of the narrowness of the author's literary creed, innumer- able passages of the happiest and most original criticism, par- ticularly in treating of those writers who, belonging to what is called the classical or artificial school, exhibit characteristics which Johnson was capable of appreciating. His remarks upon the poetry of Cowley, Waller, and Pope, are admirable ; and his immense knowledge of life, and sharp and weighty sense, have filled his pages with striking and valuable observations. On December 13, 1784, this good man and vigorous writer died, after suffering severely from dropsy and a complication of disorders.; and a week afterwards his body was buried in Westminster Ab- bey. Johnson was a singular mixture of prejudice and liberality, of scepticism and credulity, of bigotry and candor : and with that paradoxical strangeness which pervades all his personality, we know him better,, and admire him more, in the unadorned records which Boswell has given of his conversational triumphs, than in those rhetorical and elaborate writings which his con- temporaries thought so magnificent, but which more recent gen- erations seem likely to condemn to comparative oblivion. 393. EDMUND BURKE (1731-1797) was a man of powerful and versatile genius, carrying the fervor and imagery of a great orator into philosophical discussion, and uniting in himself the highest qualities of the statesmen, the writer, and the philoso- pher. His predominant quality was a burning enthusiasm for whatever object attracted his sympathies, and in the service of this enthusiasm he impressed all the disciplined forces of his learning, his logic, and his historical and political knowl- edge. He was the son of a Dublin attorney; came early to England to study law, but commenced his career as a miscellaneous writer in magazines. He was the founder and first author of the Annual Register, a useful epitome 230 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXI. of political and general facts; and gained his first reputation by his Vindication of Natural Society, an ironical imitation of the style and sentiments of Lord Bolingbroke ; which was followed a few months afterwards by his Essay on the Sublime and Beau- tiful. (218} a short treatise in which ingenuity is more percep- tible than solidity of reasoning. He now became a leading member of the brilliant literary circle which surrounded Johnson, who, jealous as he was of his own social supremacy, confessed that in Burke he encountered a fully equal antagonist. He began his political career as Secretary to Hamilton in Ireland, and he was afterwards attached in the same capacity to Lord Rockingham. He sat in the House of Commons successively for Wendover, Bristol, (219} and Malton, and was one of the most prominent debaters during the agitated period of the Amer- ican War and the French Revolution. For a short time he held the lucrative post of Paymaster of the Forces in the second Rock- ingham administration. The culminating points of his political life were his share in the famous India Bill, which was to en- tirely change the administration of our Eastern dependencies, and the part he played in the trial of Warren Hastings, which lasted from 1786 to 1795, and terminated with the acquittal of the accused. (221} In this majestic and solemn scene, where a great nation sat in public judgment upon a great criminal, Burke played perhaps the most prominent part: he was one of the managers of the impeachment in the name of the Commons, and his speech is one of the sublimest philippics that ancient or modern oratory can show. The Reign of Terror in France transformed Burke from a constitutional Whig into a Tory, but at the same time animated his genius to some of its most un- rivalled bursts of eloquence. His finest written compositions are his Letter to a Noble Lord, (222} in which he defends himself against the aspersions of the Duke of Bedford, who had attacked him for accepting a pension; his Reflections on the French Revo- lution, (220} and his Letter on a Regicide Peace. In Parlia- ment, though his speeches were perhaps unequalled for splendor of illustration, for an almost supernatural acuteness of political foresight, and for the profoundest analysis of constitutional principles, he was often less popular than many inferior de- baters : he spoke over the heads of his audience, but he will ever be regarded as one of the greatest orators and statesmen of any age or country. A. D. 1723-1805. ADAM SMITH. PALEY. 231 394. From about the beginning of 1769, and with occasional interruptions down to 1772, there appeared in the "Public Ad- vertiser," one of the leading London journals, then published by Woodfall, a series of Letters, for the most part signed JUNIUS. (223*) Their attack was directed against the great public men of the day, more especially the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford; and they exhibited so much weight and dignity of style, and so minute an acquaintance with the details of party tactics, and breathed such a lofty tone of constitutional principle, combined with such a bitterness, and even ferocity of personal invective, that their influence was unbounded. The whole annals of polit- ical controversy show nothing so bitter and terrible as the per- sonalities and invectives of Junius, which are rendered more formidable by the lofty dignity of the language, and by the mod- erate and constitutional principles which he professes to main- tain. These letters will always be regarded as masterpieces in their particular style. Burke, Hamilton, Francis, Lyttelton, and Lord George Sackville have been successively fixed upon as the writer; but of these Sir Philip Francis appears to have the strongest suffrages. 393. ADAM SMITH (1723-1790) was the founder, in England, of the science of Political Economy. He was a Scotchman, and successively Professor of Logic and of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. His most important work is the In- quiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, (224} the fruit of ten years of study and investigation, which laid the foundation for modern economic science. It was the first systematic treatise produced in England upon this most important subject; and though not free from erroneous deduc- tions, was the most valuable contribution ever made to a science, then almost in its infancy, which was destined, thanks in a great measure to his clear and logical reasoning and abundant and popular illustration, to exert an immense and beneficial influ- ence on legislation and commerce. His moral and metaphysical theories are now nearly forgotten, but his Inquiry will ever re- main the alphabet or text-book of the important science of which he was the pioneer. 390. The most prominent names in the English theological philosophy of the eighteenth century are those of BISHOP BUT- LER (1692-1752) and WILLIAM PALEY (1743-1805). The former is more remarkable for the severe and coherent logic with which 232 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXI. he demonstrates his conclusions, the latter for the consummate skill with which he popularized the abstruser arguments of his predecessors. Butler's principal work is The Analogy of Re- ligion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature, (181} in which he examines into the resemblance be- tween the existence and attributes of God, as proved by argu- ments drawn from the works of Nature, and shows that that existence and those attributes are in no way incompatible with the notions conveyed to us by Revelation. Paley's books are numerous, and all excellent: the principal of them are Elements of Moral and Political Philosophy, the Horce Paulina, (225} the Evidences of Christianity, and the wonderful production of his old age, the Treatise on Natural Theology. It will be seen from the titles of these books over what an immense extent of moral and theological philosophy Paley's mind had travelled. For clearness, animation, and easy grace, the style of Paley has rarely been equalled. 397. If the palm of merit is to be awarded less to the preten- sion of a literary work than to a universal popularity arising from a consummate charm of execution, then the fame of GIL- BERT WHITE (1720-1793) is to be coveted little less eagerly than that of Izaak Walton. White was educated at Oxford, where he became a fellow of Oriel College ; but, declining all college liv- ings, he resided in his native village of Selborne, in Hampshire, and there devoted his happy and tranquil life to the observation of nature. In a series of letters he has registered every phenom- enon both of animal and vegetable life, as well as of scenery and meteorology, which came under the eye of a most curious, patient, and loving observer; and a thousand details, so slight or so familiar as to escape the attention of previous naturalists, have been chronicled with exquisite grace, and form valuable contributions to science. Every change of weather, every cir- cumstance in the habits of birds, beasts, and insects, were noted by him with an interest and enthusiasm' that captivate the dull- est reader ; and the Natural History of Selborne has made at least as many naturalists as Robinson Crusoe has made sailors. 398. Among the vast crowd of less noticeable writers who might claim a place in this chapter, a few produced works that still possess some value, though they are comparatively but little known. In 1764 LORD LYTTELTON (1709-1773), slightly distin* guished as a poet, and to some extent as a statesman, published A. D. 1709-1773. LYTTELTON. CHESTERFIELD. 233 a History of Henry //., which is noteworthy as being the most elaborate and minute work yet written on one of the most mo- mentous reigns in the English Annals, and as being one of the earliest attempts made in the direction of a sound system of historical criticism. SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE'S Commentaries on the La-ws of England is still the only popular compendium of our constitutional and legal principles and usages. The Ele- ments of Criticism of LORD KAMES, The Philosophy of Rhetoric of DR. GEORGE CAMPBELL, remain, in spite of many publica- tions on the same subjects since their time, standard authorities in their respective departments. The fame of LORD CHESTER- FIELD'S Letters, which was almost unparalleled when they were first published, is not extinct even yet; nor was it altogether unde,'erved, let Dr. Johnson say what he will. 234 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. CHAPTER XXII. THE DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY. 890. THE great revolution in popular taste and sentiment, which substituted what is called the romantic type in literature for the cold and clear-cut artificial spirit of that classicism which is exhibited in its highest form in the writings of Pope, was, like all powerful and durable movements, whether in politics or in letters, gradual. The mechanical perfection of the poetry of the age of Queen Anne had been imitated with such success, that every versifier had caught the trick of melody and the neat antithetical opposition of thought; and indications soon began to be perceptible of a tendency to seek for subjects and forms of expression in a wider, more passionate, and more natural sphere of nature and emotion. In MATTHEW GREEN'S (1697-1737) truly original poem, called The Spleen, in the Minstrel of JAMES BEATTIE (1735-1803), in the striking meditative lines entitled The Grave (226) by ROBERT BLAIR (1699-1746) this tendency is perceptible, and may be in some measure ascribed to the weariness inspired by the eternal repetition of the neat and epigrammatic ingenuity which had gradually become a mere far-off echo of Pope. 400. JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748), the poet who connects the age of Pope with that of Crabbe, was born in a rural and re- tired corner of Scotland, and after receiving his education at Edinburgh, came to London in 1725, carrying with him the un- finished sketch of his poem of Winter. (228} This work ap- peared in 1726, and after a short time was received with great favor. Summer was given to the world in the succeeding year; and Thomson then without delay issued proposals for the com- pletion of the whole cycle of poems, Spring- and Autumn (227) being still wanting to fill up the round of the Seasons. In 1733 the Lord Chancellor Talbot, to whose son Thomson had been for some time tutor, appointed him to a sinecure office in the of Chancery; and even when he lost this post on the A. D. 1700-1748. JAMES THOMSON. 235 death of the minister, its loss was supplied by the yearly pen- sion of one hundred pounds from the Prince of Wales ; and his friend Mr. Lyttelton afterwards conferred on him a lucrative situation under the Crown. He now purchased a snug cottage near Richmond, and lived in modest luxury and literary ease. He was of an extremely kind and generous disposition, and his devotion to his relations is an amiable trait in his character. His death was premature; for, catching cold in a boating-party on the Thames, he died of a fever in the forty-eighth year of his age. During the years of his happy retirement, he had time to compose his delightful half-serious, half-playful poem of the Castle of Indolence, (229) the most enchanting of the many imitations of the style and manner of Spenser, and a work which at the same time possesses the finest qualities of Thom- son's own natural genius. He was also the author of a some- what declamatory and ambitious poem on the subject of Liberty, and of a few tragedies, some of which, as Sophonisba, were acted with temporary success. The Seasons, consisting of the four detached poems Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, must be considered as the corner-stone of Thomson's literary fame. It is a work, in plan and treatment, entirely original, and gives a general, and at the same time a minute description of all the phenomena of Nature during an English year. The metre is blank-verse, which, though seldom showing anything of the Miltonic swell or tenderness, is rich and harmonious. Thomson's chief defect is a kind of pompous struggle after fine language, which sometimes degenerates into ludicrous vulgarity. Jn order to relieve the monotony of a poem entirely devoted to description, he has occasionally introduced episodes or inci- dental pictures more or less naturally suggested by the subject ; though in such of these as involve the passion of love, it must be confessed that his mode of delineating that feeling is far more ardent than ideal. In point of literary finish the Castle of In- dolence, is superior to the Seasons. The allegory of the en- chanted "Land of Drowsihead," in which the unhappy victims of Indolence find themselves hopeless captives, and their deliv- ery from durance by the Knight Industry, are relieved with occasional touches of a sly and pleasant humor, as in those passages where Thomson has drawn portraits of himself and of his friends. 401. The popularity of WILLIAM SHENSTONE (1714-1763), 236 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. once considerable, has now given place to oblivion; (230} but his pleasing and original poem the Schoolmistress will deserve to retain a place in every collection of English verse. This is a poem in the Spenserian stanza and antique diction, which, with a delightful mixture of quaint playfulness and tender descrip- tion, paints the dwelling, the character, and the pursuits of an old village dame who keeps a rustic day school. 402. The career of WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) was brief and unhappy. He exhibited from very early years the strong poetical powers of a genius which, ripened by practice and ex- perience, would have made him the first lyrical writer of his age ; but his ambition was rather feverish than sustained ; he led a life of projects and dissipation ; and the first shock of literary disappointment drove him to despondency, despondency to in- dulgence, and indulgence to insanity. His first publication was a series of Eclogues, transferring the usual sentiments of pas- toral verse to the scenery and manners of the East. Thus a camel-driver bewailing the dangers and solitude of his desert journey takes the place of the lamentation of the shepherd ex- pelled from his native fields;, and the dialogues so frequent in the bucolics of Virgil or Theocritus are transformed into the amcebscan complaints of two Circassian exiles. But though these eclogues exhibit traces of vivid imagery and melodious verse, the real genius of Collins must be looked for in his Odes. Judged by these latter, he will be found entitled to a very high .place : for true warmth of coloring, power of personification, and dreamy sweetness of harmony, no English poet had till then appeared that could be compared to Collins. Of these, that entitled The Passions is the most frequently quoted ; neverthe- less, many of the less popular ones, as that addressed to Fear, (231) to Pity, to Simplicity, and that On the Poetical Charac- ter, contain happy strokes, sometimes expressed in wonderfully laconic language, and singularly vivid portraiture. Some of the smaller and less ambitious lyrics, as the Verses to the Mem- ory of Thomson, the Dirge in Cymbcline, and the exquisite verses Hoiv sleep the brave, are perhaps destined to a more certain im- mortality; but all the qualities of Collins's finest thought and expression will be found united in the lovely little Ode to Even- ing, consisting merely of a few stanzas in blank verse, but so subtly harmonized that we may read them a thousand times without observing the absence of rhyme. A. D. 1721-1771. AKENSIDE. GRAY. 237 403. MARK AKEXSIDE (1721-1770), like Arbuthnot, Garth, Smollett, and Blackmore, was a physician as well as a writer, and a man of considerable learning, as well as of a pure, lofty, and classical turn of genius. His chief work is the philosophi- cal poem entitled The Pleasures of the Imagination, (232) in which he seeks at once to investigate and illustrate the emotions excited by beautiful objects in art and nature upon the human mind. The philosophical merit of his theories, indeed, is very often but small ; but the beauty of the imagery and the language will ever secure for this lofty, thoughtful and noble work, the admiration of those readers who can content themselves" with elevated thoughts, without looking for passages of strong human interest, in which Akenside is deficient. Few English poets since Milton have been more deeply saturated with the spirit of classi- cal antiquity than Akenside. 404. The greatest of the exclusively lyrical poets that England had hitherto produced was THOMAS GRAY (1716-1771), a man of vast and varied acquirements, whose life was devoted to the cul- tivation of letters. He received his education at Eton, and after- wards settled in learned retirement at Cambridge, where he be- came Professor of History in 1768. He acquired a high poetical reputation by his beautiful Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, (234) published in 1747; which was followed, at pretty frequent intervals, by his other imposing and highly-finished works, the Elegy -written in a Country Chtirchyard, (233) the Pindaric Odes, and the far from numerous but splendid produc- tions which make up his works. His industry was untiring, and his acquirements undoubtedly immense; for he had pushed his researches far beyond the usual limits of ancient classical phi- lology, and was not only deeply versed in the romance litera- ture of the Middle Ages, in modern French and Italian, but had studied the then almost unknown departments of Scandinavian and Celtic poetry. Many passages of his wo*ks are a kind of mosaic of thought and imagery borrowed from Pindar, from the choral portions of the Attic tragedy, and from the majestic lyrics of the Italian poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies : but the fragments are, so to say, fused into one solid body by the intense flame of a powerful and fervent imagination. His finest lyric compositions are the Odes entitled The Bard, that on the Progress of Poesy, (235) the Installation Ode on the Duke of Grafton's election to the Chancellorship of the Uni- 238 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. versity, and the short but truly noble Ode to Adversity. The Elegy 'written in a Country Churchyard is a masterpiece from beginning to end. The thoughts indeed are obvious enough, but the dignity with which they are expressed, the immense range of allusion and description with which they are illustrated, and the finished grace of the language and versification in which they are embodied, give to this work something of that inimita- ble perfection of design and execution which we see in an an- tique statue or a sculptured gem. In the Bard, starting from the picturesque idea of a Welsh poet and patriot contemplating the victorious invasion of his country by Edward I., he passes in prophetic review the whole panorama of /English History, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. In the odes entitled The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin. Gray borrowed his materials from the Scandinavian legends. The tone of the Norse poetry is not perhaps very faithfully reproduced: but these at- tempts to revive the rude and archaic grandeur of the Eddas deserve no small approbation. 405. The two brothers JOSEPH WARTON (1722-1800), and THOMAS WARTON (1728-1790) were the sons of a Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and both brothers, especially the younger, de- serve a place in the annajs of our literature. Thomas, who was poet-laureate from 1785 until his death, rendered great service to literature by his agreeable but unfinished History of English Poetry, which unfortunately comes to an abrupt termination just as the author is about to enter upon the glorious period of the Elizabethan era : but the work is valuable for research and a warm tone of appreciative criticism. The best of his own origi- nal verses are sonnets, breathing a peculiar tender softness of feeling, and showing much picturesque fancy. 400. WILLIAM COWPER (i73i-iSoo) ; is eminently the poet of the domestic affections, and the exponent of that strong religious feeling, which towards the end of the eighteenth century began to penetrate and modify all the relations of social life. (236~ 24O) His story is singularly sad. He was of ancient and even illustrious race, the grand-nephew of Lord Chancellor Cowper, and was born with an extremely tender and impressionable character. After being cowed by bullying at a private school he was sent to Westminster; whence he passed for some years into an attorney's office; but ultimately obtained the post of Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords; where, however, A. D. 1731-1800. WILLIAM COWPER. 239 his sensitive nature was so terrified at the idea of making a pub- lic appearance, that he fell into a gloomy despondency, and at- tempted to put an end to his existence. Madness followed ; and although a short confinement in an asylum restored his intellect, he was so shaken by the attack as to be entirely unfitted for any active career. He now retired into the country, and passed the remainder of his life in privacy, being first placed under the care of the family of Mr. Unwin, a clergyman in Huntingdon. This was the beginning of that remarkable friendship with Mrs. Unwin which entered so largely into his whole subsequent life. Cowper s mind, always impressionable, became morbidly suscep- tible of enthusiastic religious feeling; and his occasional halluci- nations took that most unhappy form of mental disease, religious despair. On the death of Unwin he removed, with the widow, to Olney, where he made the friendship of John Newton, an evangelical divine of great eloquence. He began to cultivate lit- erature at first merely as a pastime, and as a means of escaping from himself; but the force, originality, and grace of his genius soon acquired popularity, and he pursued as a profession what he had at first taken up as a diversion. His poetical talent did not flower until late; in 1781 his first poems were given to the world, whereupon his friend Lady Austen playfully gave him the Sofa as a subject. Upon this he composed his poem of The Task, (238} which became so popular that he was encouraged to follow up his success with other works in a similar style, the Table-Talk, Tirocinium, (230) and many others. His most la- borious but least successful undertaking was the translation of the Iliad into English blank verse. In endeavoring to give force and vigor to this version, he fell into the opposite fault to that of Pope, and made his translation harsh and rugged, without approaching one whit nearer to the true character of his original. From Olney he removed to Weston, where Mrs. Unwin died, and the pain of this loss clouded the remaining days of the unhappy poet with redoubled gloom and despondency. 407. The pictures of life and nature drawn by Cowper, whether of rural scenery or of indoor life, have seldom been surpassed for truth and picturesqueness ; and his satirical sketches of the follies and absurdities of manners, and his indignant denuncia- tions of national offences against piety and morality, are equally remarkable, in the one case, for sharpness and humor, and in the other for a lofty grandeur of sentiment. From him the level 240 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIL banks of the Ouse, the most unromantic of English rivers, have caught a magic that will never pass away; the quiet home circle of middle English life, the tea-table, the newspaper, and the hearth, have derived from him a beauty and a dignity which other men have failed to communicate to the proudest scenes of camps and courts. In spite of the morbid religious system of Cowper, many of his comic and humorous delineations exhibit the full effulgence of a playful gayety which no cloud can dim. Of all our poets Cowper is essentially the painter of domestic life ; the mixture of worldly observation, delicate painting of na- ture, and intense religious feeling, that is found in his poems, peculiarly endears them to the great middle class in England. Many of Cowper's songs and shorter lyrics are elegant and spor- tive ; and his beautiful lines On Receiving- my Mother's Picture (236} will ever be read with delight. His comic ballad John Gilpin is a pleasant drollery. (24:0) His letters are perhaps the most charming in the language; they ghow the poet in his most amiable light, and invest every trifle which surrounds him with a sort of halo of purity and goodness. 408. Several poems have appeared in England possessing what may be called a technical character, being either devoted to the teaching of some art, or describing some special sport or amusement, such as ARMSTRONG'S Act of Preserving Health, GRAINGER'S Sugar-Cane, PHILIPS'S Cyder, and SOMERVILLE'S Chase. The most successful work, however, of this kind, is the Shipwreck (241} of WILLIAM FALCONER (1730-1769), a narra- tive poem in three cantos, detailing the danger and ultimate loss of a merchant-ship on a voyage to Venice, which is cast away, after experiencing a violent gale in the Greek archipelago, on the dangerous rocks of Cape Colonna, the ancient Sunium. To the same department of poetry belongs also ERASMUS DARWIN (1731-1802), who endeavored to clothe in dazzling and somewhat tinsel splendor the principles of the Linnsean sexual system of vegetable physiology. His principal work is the .Botanic Garden (242) the first part of which was entitled the Economy of Vegeta- tion, and the second the Loves of the Plants, which latter Can- ning humorously parodied in the Loves of the Triangles. He wrote another poem, entitled The Temple of Nature ; or, the Ori- gin of Society. In these compositions the elaborate and ambi- tious melody of his versification has not sufficed to compensate for the over-wrought and fatiguing monotony of his imagery ; A. D. 1738-1796. JAMES MACPHEESON. 241 though many of his episodes and subordinate descriptions ex- hibit a great force of language, and a powerful faculty of the picturesque. 409. The middle of the eighteenth century was remarkable for several nearly contemporaneous attempts at literary imposture the poetical forgeries of Macpherson, Chatterton, and Ireland. The first of these three has alone survived, in some part, the ordeal of strict critical examination ; and that because, though the totality of the works palmed upon the public as Ossian's have no claim whatever to the character arrogated for them bv their pretended translator, they are nevertheless filled with names, incidents, and allusions really traceable to Celtic an- tiquity. JAMES MACPHERSON (1738-1796), originally a country schoolmaster, and afterwards a tutor, pretended to have accu- mulated, in his travels through the Highlands of Scotland, an immense mass of fragments of ancient poetry composed in the Gaelic or Erse dialect common to that country and Ireland. The translations, which Macpherson professed to have made from the originals, were composed in a pompous and declamatory sort of prose ; and immediately on their publication a furious war ensued on the question of their authenticity. (24:3} The High- landers, eager for the honor of their country, maintained the affirmative; while the Southern critics, among whom Johnson occupied a foremost place, expressed the strongest disbelief. Macpherson might at once have settled the question by pro- ducing the supposed originals ; but this he refused to do, under the pretext that his honor had been impeached. He afterwards published two long poems in the same style, Fingal in six, and Temora in eight books, which he attributed, like the preceding fragments, to the genius of the Celtic Homer. The regularity of construction in these works, the numerous passages in them as well as in their predecessors evidently plagiarized from the whole range of literature, from the Bible and Homer down to Shakspeare, Milton, and even Thomson, the artificial and monot- onous though strained and highly-wrought diction, and, above all, the sentiments in constant discordance with the real man- ners of the ancient Highlanders, would have sufficed, even in the general ignorance of the Gaelic language, to undeceive all except those who were ignorantly carried away by the imposing but hollow magnificence of the style. Yet in Germany the ad- miration for these productions has not even now altogether 16 242 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. subsided ; and perhaps the only poetry, which attracted the imagination of Napoleon, was this wild declamatory rhapsody which left no faint traces upon his bulletins. 410. The annals of literature hardly present a more extraordi- nary example of precocious genius than that of THOMAS CHAT- TERTON (1752-1770), nor an instance of a career more brief and melancholy. {24=4} He was born in I752 r the son of a poor sexton and parish schoolmaster at Bristol; and he died, by sui- cide, before he had completed his eighteenth year. He produced at eleven years of age verses which will more than bear a com- parison with the early poems of any author; and though he had received little education beyond that of a parish school, he con- ceived the project of deceiving all the learned of his age, and creating, it may almost be said, a whole literature of the past. In the muniment room of St. Mary Redcliffe's, Bristol, of which church his father was sexton, there was a chest called Canynge's coffer (Canynge was a rich citizen, who lived in Edward IV. 's reign), in which: had been preserved charters and other docu- ments connected with Canynge's benefactions to the church. The young poet, familiarized with the sight of these antiquated writings, conceived the idea of forging a whole series of docu- ments, which he pretended either to have found in Canynge's coffer, or to have transcribed from originals in that mysterious receptacle. After successfully producing these on several occa- sions, as local events appeared appropriately to suggest them, he went so far as to furnish Horace Walpole, then engaged on his Anecdotes of British Painters, with a long list of mediaeval artists who had flourished in Bristol. All these documents he fathered upon a priest, Thomas Rowley, whom he represents to have been employed by the munificent Canynge as a sort of agent for collecting works of art. The poems are of immense variety and unquestionable merit; and though modern criticism will instantly detect in them, as did Gray and Mason when Wal- pole submitted some of them to their opinion, the most glaring marks of forgery, yet their brilliancy and their number were enough to deceive many learned scholars in an age when minute antiquarian knowledge of the Middle Ages was much rarer than at present. Yet no task is so difficult as that of successfully imitating ancient compositions, and Chatterton fell into errors which detect him at once. Thus in his eagerness to incrust his diction with the rust of antiquity, he overlays his words with A. D. 1754-1835. IRELAND. CEABBE. 243 I such an accumulation of consonants as belong to ho orthography of any age of our language. He has also, as was inevitable, sometimes made a slip in the use of an old "word, as when he borrowed the expression mortmal which he found in Chaucer's description of the Cook, he employed it to signify, not a disease, the gangrene, but a dish. Of the same kind are his innumera- ble examples of impossible architecture and heraldry at variance with every principle of the art. Burning with pride, hope, and literary ambition, the unhappy lad betook himself to London, where after struggling a short time with distress, and almost with starvation, he poisoned himself with a dose of arsenic on the 25th of August, 1770. Singularly enough his acknowledged poems, though indicating very great powers, are manifestly inferior to those he wrote in the assumed character of Thomas Rowley. 411. WILLIAM HENRY IRELAND (1777-1835) deserves mention only on account of his Shakspearian forgeries, among which was a play entitled Vortigern, in which John Kemble acted in 1795. Ireland soon afterwards acknowledged his guilt. 412. If Cowper-be rightly denominated the poet of the. domes- tic hearth, GEORGE CRABDE (1754-1832) is eminently the poet of the passions in humble life. He was born at the little sea- port town of Aldborough in Suffolk, where his father was a humble fisherman ; and after a dreamy and studious childhood, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary. Passionately fond of literature and botany, he determined to seek his fortune in London, carrying with him several unfinished poems, which he published, but which were coldly received. After some stay in London he found himself reduced to despair; when he ad- dressed a manly and affecting letter to Edmund Burke, who im- mediately admitted him to his house and friendship. From this moment his fortune changed ; he was assisted, both with money and advice, in bringing out his poem of The Library, was in- duced to enter the Church, and was promised the powerful influ- ence of Lord Chancellor Thurlow. He became domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland ; but after marriage with a young lady to whom he had been long attached, he changed the splendid restraint of Beauvoir for the humbler but more independent ex- istence of a parish priest, and in this occupation he continued until his death. 413. It was not till the appearance of The Village, in 1783, 244 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. that Crabbe struck out that path in which he had neither prede- cessor nor rival. The success of this poem was very great, for it was the first attempt to paint the manners and existence of the laboring class without dressing them up in the artificial colors of fiction. His next work was The Parish Register, (246) in which the public saw the gradual ripening of his vigorous and original genius; and this was followed, at comparatively short intervals, by The Borough, Tales in Verse, and Tales of the Hall. These, with the striking but painful poems, written in a different measure, entitled Sir Eustace Grey and The Hall of Justice, make up Crabbe's large and valuable contribution to the poetical literature of his country. Almost all these works are constructed upon a peculiar and generally similar plan. Crabbe starts with some description, as of the Village, the Parish Church, the Borough, from which he naturally proceeds to de- duce a series of separate episodes, usually of middle and humble life, appropriate to the leading idea. Thus in the Parish Regis- ter we have some of the most remarkable births, marriages, and deaths that are supposed to take place in a year amid a rural population ; in the Borough {245} the lives and adventures of the most prominent characters that figure on the narrow stage of a small provincial town. With the exception of Sir Eustace Grey and the Hall of Justice, which are written in a peculiar rhymed short-lined stanza, Crabbe's poems are in the classical ten-syllabled heroic verse, and the contrast is strange between the neat Pope-like regularity of the metre, and the deep passion^ the intense reality, and the quaint humor of the scenes which he displays. No poet has more subtly traced the motives which regulate human conduct; and his descriptions of nature are marked by the same unequalled power of rendering interesting, by the sheer force of truth and exactness, the most unattractive features to the external world. The village-tyrant, the poacher, the smuggler, the miserly old maid, the pauper, and the crim- inal, are drawn with the same gloomy but vivid force as that with which Crabbe paints the squalid streets of the fishing-town, or the fen, the quay, and the heath. 414. The greatest poet, beyond all comparison, that Scotland has produced is ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796). (247-251) He was born at the hamlet of Alloway in Ayrshire, and was the son of a peasant farmer of the humblest class. Popular education was at that period very generally diffused in Scotland ; and ac- A. D. 1759-1796. EGBERT BURNS. 245 cordinglj he acquired a good general acquaintance with the great masterpieces of English literature, and was able to use with per- fect facility the style and diction of the great classical authors of South Britain. From a very early age he began to express in verse the impressions made upon his fancy by the beautiful and pastoral nature which surrounded him, and the outpourings of his own feelings and heart. In early life Burns labored like a peasant upon his father's farm, and afterwards endeavored, but withoutsuccess, to conduct a farm with his brothers. On the failure of these speculations, he resolved to emigrate to the West Indies ; and in order to raise funds for the voyage, he was in- duced to publish a collection of his poems, which had long en- joyed a great local popularity. They were at once received by the highly cultivated society of Edinburgh with a tempest of enthusiasm that instantly made the " Ayrshire ploughman " the idol of the fashionable and literary world. Intoxicated by suc- cess, he abandoned his design ; and after again falling into em- barrassments, rendered more inextricable by his irregularities, he obtained a humble appointment in the Excise service, the duties of which were unfortunately of a nature to still further foster habits of intemperance that had been continually growing upon him. His strong constitution was undermined by excess and excitement of all kinds, and the poet died of fever at Dum- fries, in extreme poverty, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. 415. In Burns the highest poetical qualities were united to a degree which is rarely met with, tenderness the most exqui- site, humor the broadest and the most refined, the most delicate, and yet powerful perception of natural beauty, the highest finish , and the easiest negligence of style. His writings are chiefly lyric, consisting of songs of inimitable beauty, but he has also produced works either of a narrative or satirical character, in some of which, too, the lyric element is combined with the de- scriptive. The longest and most remarkable of his poems is Tarn d 1 Shantcr, a tale of popular witch-superstition, in which the most brilliant descriptive power is united to a pathos the most touching, a fancy the most wild, and a humor the quaintest, slyest, and most joyous. Another inimitable poem, half-narra- tive, but set thick with glorious songs, is the Jolly Beggars : careless vagabond jollity, roaring mirth and gypsy merriment, have never been so expressed. In his Address to the De'il, Death and Dr. Hornbook. The Two. Dogs, and the dialogue 246 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. between the Old and New Bridges of Ayr, Burns combines humorous and picturesque description with reflections and thoughtful moralizing upon life and society. The Dialogue be- tween the Tiva Dogs is an elaborate comparison between the relative degree of virtue and happiness granted to the rich and the poor. His description of the joys and consolations of the poor man's lot is perhaps even more beautiful in this poem than in the more generally popular Cotter's Saturday Night, (251') written in stanzas, and in a language less provincial ihan the former, a circumstance which has rendered the poem better known to the general public. In the poem descriptive of rustic fortune-telling on Hallo-ween, in the Vision of Liberty, where Burns gives such a sublime picture of his own early aspirations, in the unequalled sorrow that breathes through the Lament for Glencairn, in Scotch Drink, the Haggis, the epistles to Captain Grose and Matthe^v Henderson, in the exquisite description of the death of the old ewe Mailie, and the poet's address to his old mare, we find the same prevailing mixture of pathos and humor, that truest pathos which finds its materials in the common every- day objects of life, and that truest humor which is allied to the deepest feeling. The famous lines On Turning up a Mouse's Nest with the Plough, and on destroying in the same way a Mountain Daisy, will ever remain among the chief gems of ten- derness and beauty. 416. Those of Burns's Songs that are written in pure English have often an artificial and somewhat pretentious air, which places them below the Doric of the Lowland Muse. Intensity of feeling, condensed force and picturesqueness of expression, and admirable melody of flow, aie the qualities which distinguish them. In the song Ae fond Kiss and then tve Part is concen trated the whole essence of a thousand love-poems : the heroic, outbreak of patriotism in Scots tv/ia hae tvi' Wallace bled (%4-ty) is a lyric of true Tyrta?an force : and in those of a calmer and more lamenting character, as Te Banks and Braes, there is the finest union of personal sentiment with the most complete as- similation of the poet's mind to the loveliness of external nature. The only defects with which this great poet can be reproached are an occasional coarseness of satire, as exemplified in the per- sorihlities of Holy Fair, a tone of defiant and needless opposition of one class against another, and now and then a vulgar and misplaced ornament which contrasts tawdrily with the sweet simplicity of the general style. A. D. 1731-1816. CHURCHILL. SHERIDAN. 247 417. The poetical movement in the direction of greater free- dom and an expansion into a larger and fuller life, and the eagerness to escape from the paralyzing influences of the so- called correct school, which characterized the latter half of the eignteenth century, are no less marked in the many minor poets of- this time. Thus the numerous satirical productions of CHARLES CHURCHILL (1731-1764) are distinguished by a rugged massive force and a rude strength which strikingly contrast with the dainty elegance and refined feebleness of the followers of Pope. His Rosciad, in which he mercilessly lashed the stage and actors of the day, the Prophecy of Famine, directed against the then highly obnoxious Scotch, the Cock Lane Ghost, where the great Doctor figures as "Pomposo," are all evidences that a nobler period of literary development was at hand. Few wri- ters have enjoyed a greater immediate popularity than Chur- chill; but notwithstanding his. merits, and they are numerous, the interest in his works has almost entirely died out with that of the bitter political controversy to which they mainly belong. The Grongar Hill of DYER, and the Clifton Grove of KIRKE WHITE are likely to be remembered as long as vigor of imagi- nation and poetic sensibility are prized in England. 418. In tracing the progress of the comic drama from the middle of the eighteenth century down almost to the present time, the chief names to be noted are those of Gar.rick, Foote, Cumberland, the two Colmans, father and son, of whom the second is by far the more considerable, and lastly Sheridan, that strange cometary genius, whose powers were so versatile, and whose life was so brilliant and so disreputable. But with the single exception of the last, none of these authors produced anything of permanent value, though all of them enjoyed a high reputation in their day. 419. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751-1816) is certainly one of the most remarkable figures in the social, political, and intellectual life of the period. Byron justly said that the intel- lectual reputation of Sheridan was truly enviable, that he had made the best speech that on the Begums of Oude written the two best comedies, the Rivals and the School for Scan- dal, {253} the best opera, the Duenna, and the best farce, the Critic. His whole life, both in Parliament and in the would, was a succession of extravagance and imprudence; and the in- genious shifts by which he endeavored to stave oft" his embar- 248 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXII. rassments, and the jokes with which he disarmed even his angriest creditors, would of themselves furnish matters for a most amusing jest-book. His two great comedies belong to the two distinct types of the drama ; the Rivals depends for its in- terest upon the grotesqueness of its characters and the amusing unexpectedness of its incidents, while the School for Scandal is essentially a piece of witty dialogue or repartee. The language of the latter was polished by the author with the most anxious care, and every passage sparkles with the cold and diamond-like splendor of Congreve. In the Critic we have a farce, based upon the same plan as the Rehea-rsal, which gives the author the opportunity of introducing a burlesque or caricature of the imaginary piece, while at the same time he can introduce the absurdities of the author and the criticism of his friends. It is probable that not a line of these three pieces will ever cease to be popular : whether acted or read, they are equally delightful. A dramatic work which was immensely popular at this time, and which even Sir Walter Scott pronounced a masterpiece, is the Douglas of JOHN HOME (1724-1808). The author was a minister of the Scotch Kirk, but lost this position by the success of his play. He was, however, pensioned by Lord Bute. His other works are worthless, and now entirely forgotten. (358) A. D. 1771-1832. WALTER SCOTT. 249 CHAPTER XXIII. WALTER SCOTT. 420. THE great revolution in taste, substituting romantic for classical sentiment and subjects, which culminated in the poems and novels of Walter Scott, is traceable to the labors of BISHOP PERCY (1728-1811). His publication in 1765, under the title of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, of a collection of old bal- lads, many of which had been preserved only in manuscript, while others, having originally been printed in the rudest man- ner on flying sheets for circulation among the lower orders of the people, had owed their preservation only to the care of collectors, must be considered as a critical epoch in the history of our literature. Many authors before him, as, for example, Addison and Sir Philip Sydney, had expressed the admiration which a cultivated taste must ever feel for the rough but inimita- ble graces of our old ballad-poets ; but Percy was the first who undertook an examination, at once systematic and popular, of those neglected treasures. It is true that he did not always ad- here with scrupulous fidelity to the ancient texts, and where the poems were in a fragmentary and imperfect condition he did not hesitate, any more than Scott after him in the Border Minstrel- sy, to fill up the rents of time with matter of his own invention. This, however, at a period when his chief object was to excite among general readers an interest in these fine old monuments of mediae val genius, was no unpardonable offence. Percy found, in collecting these compositions, that the majority of the oldest and most interesting were distinctly traceable, both as regards their subjects and the dialect in which they were writ- ten, to the North Countree, that is, to the frontier region be- tween England and Scotland which had necessarily been the scene of the most frequent and striking incidents of predatory warfare, such as those recorded in the noble ballads of Chevy Chase and the Battle of Ottcrbnrn. Besides a very large num- ber of these purely heroic ballads, Percy gave specimens of an 250 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIII. immense series of songs and lyrics extending down to a com- paratively late period of English history, even to his own cen- tury; but the chief interest of his collection, and the chief service he rendered to literature by his publication, is concen- trated on the earlier portion. It is impossible to exaggerate the influence exerted -by Percy's Reliques: this book has been de- voured with the most intense interest by generation after gener- ation of English poets,, and has undoubtedly contributed to give the first direction to the youthful genius of many of our most illustrious writers. The boyish enthusiasm of Walter Scott was stirred, " as with the sound of a trumpet," by the vivid recitals of the old Border rhapsodists ; and but for Percy it is possible that we should have had neither the Lady of the Lake nor Wavcrlc.y. In fact, the appearance of this work distinctly indi- cates the approaching advent of the great modern Romantic School of writers. 421. Literary history presents few examples of a career so splendid as that of WALTER SCOTT (1771-1832). (254-263) A genius at once so vigorous and versatile, a productiveness so magnificent and so sustained, will with difficulty be found, though we ransack the wide realms of ancient and modern let- ters. He was born in 1771, the son of a respectable Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, and was connected, both by the father's and mother's side, with several of those ancient historic Border families whose warlike memories his genius was destined to make immortal. In consequence of delicate health in early life he passed much of his time at the farm of his grandfather near Kelso, where he was surrounded with legends, ruins, and his- toric localities, of which he was to make in his works so admi- rable a use. On leaving the University, where he was altogether undistinguished, he was destined to the ^profession of the bar, and he practised during some time as an advocate before the Scottish tribunals. On his marriage with a young lady of French origin, called Charpentier, he took up his residence at Lasswade, where he made his first essays in literature. The direction of his mind was towards the poetical and antiquarian curiosities of the Middle Ages ; but just at that time there had been awakened among the intellectual circles of Edinburgh a taste for German literature, then only just beginning to become known ; and Scott contributed several translations, as that of Goethe's Erl-Kiinig, of the Lenore of Burger, and afterwards A. D. 1771-1832. WALTER SCOTT. 251 the whole drama of GQtz of the Iron Hand. He next conceived the plan of rescuing from oblivion the large stores of Border ballads which were still current among the descendants of the Liddesdale and Annandale mosstroopers, and for that purpose travelled for a time in those picturesque regions. The result of his researche she published as Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ; and the learning and taste of this work gave Scott a high repu- tation, and in some degree contributed to induce him to aban- don the profession of the law for that of literature. He was still further confirmed in his project by receiving the appoint- ment of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, the duties of which left much leisure at his disposal. He now changed his residence to the pretty villa of Ashestiel on the Tweed; and in 1805 he first burst upon the world in the quality of a great original romantic poet. In this year The Lay of the Last Minstrel {254:) was published, which the public received with a rapture of enthusiasm. In rapid succession followed Marmion {256-258}, the Lady of the Lake (59), Rokeby, and the Lord of the Isles ; not to enumer- ate a number of less important and less successful works, such as the Vision of Don Roderick, the Bridal of Tricrmain, Harold the Dauntless, and the Field of Waterloo, the first and last of which were written with the special purpose of celebrating the triumph over Napoleon, and which, as is generally the case with such productions, are unworthy of the author's genius. These all appeared before 1816. It is certain, however, that w r ith Rokeby the popularity of Scott's poetry, though still very great, began perceptibly to decline ; a fact which with manly sense he fully recognized, and accordingly abandoned poetry to launch into a new career a career in which he could have neither equal nor second. 422. In 1814 appeared Waverley, the commencement of which had been sketched out and thrown aside nine years before ; and with Waverley began that inimitable series of romances which he poured forth with a splendor and facility surpassing even that of the poems. During the seventeen years intervening between 1814 and 1831 were written the entire series of Waverley Novels, produced with such inconceivable rapidity, that on an average about two of such works appeared in one j-ear. Our wonder at such fertility is still further augmented, w r hen we learn that dur- ing this period Scott succeeded in writing, independently of the above fictions, a considerable number of works in the depart- 252 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIII. ments of history, criticism, and biography. The Life of Napo- leon, the Tales of a Grandfather, the amusing Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, and extensive editions, with Lives, of Dryden and Swift, all belong to this period. Spurred on by the desire of founding a territorial family, Scott went on purchasing land, planting and improving, and transforming the modest cottage of Abbotsford on his beloved Tweed into a " romance in stone and lime," a baronial residence crowded with the rarest objects of mediaeval antiquity. The very large outlay necessitated by this mode of life he supplied partly by his inex- haustible pen, and partly by engaging secretly in large com- mercial speculations with the printing and publishing firm of the Ballantynes, his intimate friends and schoolfellows. But by the failure of the Ballantynes in the fatal commercial crisis of 1825, Scott found himself ruined, and moreover responsible for a gigantic amount of debt. He might easily have escaped from his liabilities by taking advantage of the bankrupt law; but his sense of honor was so high and delicate that he only asked for time, and resolutely set himself to clear off, by unremitting literary toil, the vast accumulation of nearly one hundred and twenty thousand pounds. He all but accomplished his colossal task, but he died under the effort; nor does the history of either liter- ature or commerce afford a brighter example of probity. 423. In 1820 Scott had been raised to the dignity of the bar- onetcy; for the enchanting series of the Waverley Novels, though anonymously published, were universally ascribed to him, as to the only man in Great Britain whose pe.culiar ac- quirements and turn of genius could have given birth to them. Nevertheless, the mystery of the true authorship, long a very transparent one, was maintained by Scott with great care; and it was not till the failure of Ballantynes' house rendered conceal- ment any longer impossible that he form all}' avowed himself the author of these fictions. Towards the year 1830 his mind, exhausted by such incessant toil, began to show symptoms of hopeless weakness ; and he was sent abroad to Italy and the Med- iterranean in the vain hope of re-establishing his health. He returned home to die ; and after lingering in a state of almost complete unconsciousness for a short time, this great and good man terminated his earthly career on the 2ist of September, 1832, at Abbotsford. His personal character is almost perfect. High-minded, generous and hospitable to the extreme, he hardly A. D. 1771-1832. WALTER SCOTT. 253 had an enemy or a misunderstanding during the whole of a long and active career. He was the delight of society ; for his con- versation, though unpretending, kindly, and jovial, was filled with that union of old-world lore and acute and picturesque observation which renders his works so enchanting; and there never perhaps was a man so totally free from the pettinesses and affectations to which men of letters are prone. 424. The romantic narrative poems of Scott form an epoch in the history of modern literature. In their subjects, their versi- fication, and their treatment, they were an innovation, the suc- cess of which was as remarkable as their execution was brilliant. The materials were derived from the legends and exploits of mediaeval chivalry ; and the persons were borrowed partly from history and partly from imagination. He seems to move with most freedom in that picturesque Border region with whose ro- mantic legends he was so wonderfully familiar, and which fur- nished, from the inexhaustible stores of his memory, such a mass of striking incident and vivid detail. The greatest of these poems are unquestionably the three first the Lay of the Last Minstrel, (254=} Marmion (256-258} and the Lady of the Lake. (259} According to Scott's own judgment, the in- terest of the Lay depends mainly upon the style, that of Mar- mion upon the descriptions, that of the Lady of the Lake upon the incidents. The form adopted in all these works, though it may be remotely referred to a revival of the spirit and modes of thought of the ancient French and Anglo-Norman Trouv6res, was more immediately suggested, as Scott himself has confessed, by the example of Coleridge, who in his Christabel gave the key-note upon which he composed his vigorous and varied har- mony. The somewhat monotonous octosyllable-rhymed verse of the Trouveres Scott had the good taste to vary and enliven by a frequent intermixture of all other sorts of English verse, anapaestic, trochaic, or dactylic. But his principal metrical ex- pedient was the employment of two, three, or four verses of octosyllabic structure, rhyming together, and relieved at fre- quent intervals by a short Adonic verse of six syllables, giving at once great vigor and exquisite melody. The plots or intrigues of these poems are in general neither very probable nor very logically constructed, but they allow the poet ample opportuni- ties for striking situations and picturesque episodes. The char- acters are discriminated rather by broad and vigorous strokes, 254 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIII. than by any attempt at moral analysis or strong delineation of passion. In his descriptions of scenery, which are exceedingly varied and intensely vivid, Scott sometimes indulges in a quaint but graceful vein of moralizing which beautifully connects in- animate nature with the sentiments of the human heart. A charming instance of this will be found in the opening descrip- tion of Rokeby. 425. The action of the Lay of the Last Minstrel is drawn from the legends of Border war ; arid necromantic agency, the tourney, the raid, and the attack on a strong castle, are successively de- scribed with unabating fire and energy. The midnight expedi- tion of Deloraine to the wizard's tomb in Melrose Abbey, the ordeal of battle, the alarm, the feast, and the penitential pro- cession, are painted with the force and picturesqueness of real scenes. In Marmion the main action is of a loftier and more historical nature, and the catastrophe is made to coincide with the description of the great battle of Flodden, in which Scott gave earnest of powers in this department of painting hardly inferior to those of Homer himself. It is indeed "a fearful battle rendered you in music;" and the whole scene, from the rush and fury of the onset down to the least heraldic detail or minute trifle of armor and equipment, is delineated with the truth of an eye-witness. In the Lady of the Lake he broke up new and fertile ground; he brought into contact the wild half- savage mountaineers of the Highlands and the refined and chi- valrous court of James V. The exquisite scenery of Loch Katrine became, when invested by the magic of the descriptions, the chief object of the traveller's pilgrimage ; and it is no exaggera- tion to say, as Macaulay has done, that the glamour of the great poet's genius has for ever hallowed even the barbarous tribes whose manners are here invested with all the charms of fiction. In no other of his poems is that noble and gallant spirit the fine flower of chivalric bravery and courtesy which so univer- sally pervades Scott's poetry as it animated his personal char- acter, so powerfully manifested. Though the tale of Rokeby contains many beautiful descriptions, and exhibits strenuous efforts to draw and contrast individual characters with force, the epoch that of the Civil Wars of Charles the First's reign was one in which Scott obviously felt himself less at home than in his well-beloved feudal ages. 426. The last of the greater poems, the Lord of the Isles, went A. D. 1771-1832. WALTER SCOTT. 255 back to Scott's favorite epoch ; and the voyage of the hero-king, Robert Bruce, among the Isles, the scenes in the Castle of Artornish, the description of the savage and terrific desolation of the Western Highlands, show little diminution in picturesque power. The Battle of Bannockburn reminds us of the hand that drew the field of Flodden ; and Scott's ardent patriotism must have found a special pleasure in delineating the great vic- tory of his country's independence. Harold the Dauntless and the Bridal of Triermain are written in a less vigorous style than the earlier poems; the latter indeed was playfully intended to pass off upon the public as the production of Scott's friend Erskine. In Triermain we see a somewhat effeminate and the- atrical treatment of a striking legend which figures in the cycle of the exploits of Arthur; and Harold strives to combine the spirit of the old Berserk sagas with Christian and Chivalric manners, and the union of the two elements is too discordant to be pleasing. The Vision of Don Roderick, though based upon a striking and picturesque tradition, is principally a song of triumph over the recent defeat of the French arms in the Peninsula; but the moment he leaves the mediaeval battle-field Scott seems to lose half his power; in this poem, as in Waterloo, his combats are neither those of feudal knights nor of modern soldiers, and there is throughout a struggle painfully visible to be emphatic and picturesque. 427. If we apply to the long and splendid series of prose fic- tions generally known under the name of the Waverlcy Novels, the same rough analytical distribution as has been adopted in a former chapter for the purpose of giving a classification of Shakspeare's dramas, we shall obtain the following results. The novels are twenty-nine in number, of varied, though for the most part extraordinary degrees of excellence. They may be divided into the two main classes of Historical, or such as derive their principal interest from the delineation of some real persons or events, and Fictitious, or those which are entirely or principally founded upon Private Life or Family Legend, and which are more remotely, if at all, connected with history. The first of these two great classes will naturally subdivide into sub- ordinate categories, according to the epoch or country selected by the author, as Scottish, English, and Continental history. According to this rude, and merely approximative method of classification, we shall range seven works under the class of 256 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIIL Scottish history, seven under English, also of various epochs, and three will belong to the Continental department; while the novels mainly assignable to the head of Private Life some- times, it is true, more or less connected, as in the cases of Rob Roy and Redgauntlet, with historical events, are twelve in number. The latter class are for the most part of purely Scottish scenery and character. The following rough scheme or plan of the above arrangement will at least be found to assist the mem- ory in recalling such a vast and varied cycle of works : I. HISTORY. I. SCOTTISH . . . Waverley. The period of the Pretender's attempt in 1745. Legend of Montrose. The Civil War in the seventeenth century. Old Mortality. The rebellion of the Cove- * nanters. Monastery,')* de Pf ^" and imprison- Abb t \ ment of Mary Queen of > Scots. Fair Maid of Perth. The Reign of Robert III. Castle Dangerous. The time of the Black Douglas. II. ENGLISH . . . Ivanhoe. (263*) -The return of Richard Cceur de Lion from the Holy Land. Kcnil-worth. The reign of Elizabeth. Fortunes of Nigel. Reign of James I. Peveril of the Peak. Reign of Charles II. ; period of the pretended Catholic plot. Betrothed. The wars of the Welsh Marches. Talisman. The third Crusade : Richard Coeur de Lion. Woodstock. The Civil War and Common- wealth. III. CONTINENTAL . Quentin Durivard. Louis XI. and Charles the Bold. Anne of Geierstein. The epoch of the bat- tle of Nancy. Count Robert of Paris. The Crusaders at Byzantium. A. D. 1771-1832. WALTER SCOTT. 257 II. PRIVATE LIFE AND MIXED. Guy Mannering. Antiquary. Black Dwarf. Rob Roy. Heart of Midlothian. (262) Bride of Lammermoor. Pirate. St. Ronarfs Well. Red Gauntlet. Surgeon's Daughter. Tivo Drovers. Highland Widow. 428. In this unequalled series of fictions, the author's power of bringing near and making palpable to us the remote and his- torical, whether of persons, places, or events, is equally wonder- ful with the skill and certainty with which he clothes with solidity, so to say, the conceptions of his own imagination. In this re- spect his genius has something in common with that of Shak- speare, as shown in his historical dramas. Scott was generally careless in the construction of his plots : he wrote with great rapidity, and aimed rather at picturesque effect than at logical coherency of intrigue ; and his powerful imagination carried him away so vehemently, that the delight he must have felt in developing the humors and adventures of one of those inimi- table persons he had invented, sometimes left him no space for the elaboration of the pre-arranged intrigue. An example of this will be found, among a multitude of others, in the case of Dugald Dalgetty, or Baillie Nicol Jarvie. His style, though always easy and animated, is far from being careful or elab- orate ; and a curious amount of Scotticisms will be met with in almost every chapter. Description, whether of scenery, inci- dent, or personal appearance, is very abundant in his works ; and few of his countrymen, whether North or South Britons, will be found to complain of his luxuriance ia this respect, for it has filled his pages with bright and vivid pictures that no lapse of time can efface from the reader's memory. 429. In the delineation of character, as well as in the painting of external nature, Scott proceeds objectively : his mind was a mirror that faithfully reflected the external surfaces of things. He does not show the profound analysis which penetrates into the internal mechanism of the passions and anatomizes the na- ture of man, nor does he communicate, like Richardson and Byron, his own personal coloring to the creations of his fancy; but he sets before you so brightly, so transparently, so vividly, all that is necessary to give. a distinct idea, that his images re- main indelibly in the memory. 258 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. CHAPTER XXIV. BYRON, MOORE, SHELLEY, AND OTHER POETS. 430. THE immense influence exerted by Byron on the taste and sentiment of Europe has not yet passed away, and, though far from being so supreme and despotic as it once was, is not likely to be ever effaced. He called himself, in one of his poems, " the grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme ; " and there is some similarity between the suddenness and splendor of his literary career, and the meteoric rise and domination of the First Bona- parte. They were both, in their respective departments, the off- spring of revolution ; and both, after reigning with absolute power for some time, were deposed from their supremacy, though their reign will leave profound traces in the history of the nine- teenth century. GEORGE GORDON NOEL BYRON (1788-1824) {264-277} was born in London in 1788, and was the son of an unprincipled profligate and of a Scottish heiress of ancient and illustrious extraction; who on being deserted by her worthless husband, retired with her boy to Aberdeen, where they lived for several years in very straitened circumstances. The future poet inherited from his mother a susceptibility almost morbid, which his early training under her capricious guidance must have still further aggravated. He was about eleven years old when the death of his grand-uncle, a strange, eccentric, and misanthropic recluse, made him heir-presumptive to the baronial title of one of the most ancient aristocratic houses in England, which had been for several generations notorious for the vices and even crimes of its representatives. With the title he inherited large though embarrassed estates, and the noble picturesque residence 6f Newstead Abbey near Nottingham. He was now sent first to Harrow School, and afterwards to Trinity College, Cambridge. At college he became notorious for the irregularities of his con- duct. He was a greedy though desultory reader; and his imagi- nation appears to have been especially attracted to Oriental history and travels. A. I). 1788-1824. LORD BYRON. 259 431. It was while at Cambridge that Byron made his first lit- erary attempt, in the publication of a small volume of fugitive poems entitled Hours of Idleness, by Lord Byron, a Minor. An unfavorable criticism of this work in the Edinburgh Review threw him into a frenzy of rage. He instantly set about taking his revenge in the satire English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he involved in one common storm of invective not only his enemies of the Edinburgh Review, but almost all the literary men of the day, Walter Scott, Moore, and a thousand others, from whom he had received no provocation whatever, a vio- lence of which he soon became heartily ashamed. Though writ- ten in the classical, declamatory, and regular style of Gifford, himself an imitator of Pope, the English Bards shows a fervor and power of expression that enables us to^see in it, dimly, the earnest of Byron's intense and fiery genius, which was afterwards to exhibit itself under such different literary forms. 432. Byron now went abroad to travel, and filled his mind with the picturesque life and scenery of Greece, Turke'y, and the East, accumulating those stores of character and description which he poured forth with such royal splendor in his poems. The two first cantos of CJtilde Harold absolutely took the public by storm, and at once placed the young poet at the summit of social and literary popularity. These were followed in rapid succession by the Giaour, (268, 269} Bride of Abydos, (270} Corsair, (271}, Lara, in which Byron broke up new ground in describing the manners, scenery, and wild passions of the East and of Greece a region as picturesque as that of his rival Scott, as well known to him by experience, and as new and fresh to the public he addressed. Returning to England in the full blaze of his dawning fame, the poet became the lion of the day. He at this period married Miss Milbanke, a lady of considerable expectations; but the union was an unhappy one, and in about a year Lady Byron suddenly quitted her husband. Her reasons for taking this step will ever remain a mystery. Deeply wounded by the scandal of this separation, the poet again left England; and from thenceforth his life was passed uninterruptedly on the Continent, in Switzerland, in Italy, and in Greece, where he sol- aced his embittered spirit with misanthropical attacks upon all that his countrymen held sacred, and gradually plunged deeper and deeper into a slough of sensuality and vice. While at Geneva he produced the third canto of Childe Plarold, the Prisoner of 260 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. Chilian, (273} Manfred, (274} and the Lament of Tasso. Between 1818 and 1821 he was principally residing at Venice and Ravenna; and at this period he wrote Mazcppa, the first five cantos of Don yuan, and most of his tragedies, as Marino Fa- liero, Sardanapalus, the Ttvo Foscari, Werner, Cain, and the Deformed Transformed, in many of which the influence of Shel- ley's literary manner and philosophical tenets is more or less traceable; and here too he terminated Don Juan, at least as far as it ever was completed. In 1823 he determined to devote his fortune and his influence to the aid of the Greeks, then struggling for their independence. He arrived at Missolonghi at the begin- ning of 1824 ; where, after giving striking indications of his prac- tical talents, as well as of his ardor and self-sacrifice, he died en the i Qth of April of the same year, at the early age of thirty-six. 433. The earliest considerable effort of Byron, and in many respects his most remarkable composition, is Childe Harold, which consists of a series of gloomy but intensely poetical mono- logues, put into the mouth" of a jaded and misanthropic volup- tuary, who takes, refuge from his disenchantment of pleasure in the contemplation of the lovely or historical scenes of travel. The first two cantos are somewhat feeble and tame as compared with the strength and massive power of the two later, which are the productions of his more mature faculties. The third canto contains the magnificent description of the Battle of Waterloo, and bitter and melancholy but sublime musings on the vanity of military fame. The poem is written in the Spenserian stanza; and in the beginning the poet makes an effort to give something of the quaint and archaic character of the Fairy Queen ; but he soon throws off the useless and embarrassing restraint. In in- tensity of feeling, in richness and harmony of expression, and in an imposing tone of gloomy, sceptical, and misanthropic reflec- tion, Childe Harold stands alone in our literature. 434. The romantic tales of Byron are all marked by similar peculiarities of thought and treatment, though they may differ in the kind and degree of their respective excellences. The Giaour, (268} the Siege of Corinth, Mazeppa, Parisina. the Prisoner of Chillon, (273} and the Bride of Abydos, are written in that somewhat irregular and flowing versification which Scott brought into fashion ; while the Corsair, Lara, and the Island, are in the regular English rhymed heroic measure. These poems are, in general, fragmentary; they are made up of intensely in- A. D. 1788-1824. LOED BYRON. 261 teresting moments of passion and action. Neither in these nor in any of his works does Byron show the least power of deline- ating variety of character. There are but two personages in all his poems a man in whom unbridled passions have desolated the heart, and left it hard and impenetrable; a man contemp- tuous of his kind, sceptical and despairing, yet occasionally feel- ing the softer emotions with a singular intensity. The woman is the woman of the East sensual, devoted, and loving, but lov- ing with the unreasoning attachment of the lower animals. These elements of character, meagre and unnatural as they are, are however set before us with such consummate power that the young and inexperienced reader invariably loses sight of their contradictions. In all these poems we meet with inimitable de- scriptions, tender, animated, or profound, which harmonize with the tone of the dramatis personce : thus the famous comparison of enslaved Greece to a corpse in the Giaour, the night-scene and the battle-scene in the Corsair and Lara, the eve of the storming of the city in the Siege of Corinth, and the fiery energy of the attack in the same poem, the exquisite opening lines in Parisina, besides a multitude of others, might be adduced to prove Byron's extraordinary genius in communicating to his pic- tures the individuality and the coloring of his own feelings and character. 435. In Beppo and the Vision of Judgment Byron has ven- tured upon the gay, airy, and satirical. The former of these poems is not over-moral ; but it is exquisitely playful and spar- kling. The Vision is a most severe attack upon Southey, parody- ing the very poor and pretentious verses which the Laureate composed as a sort of apotheosis of George III. ; and though somewhat ferocious and truculent, is exceedingly brilliant. The Island is a striking incident extracted from the narrative of the famous mutiny of the Bounty, when Captain Bligh and his of- ficers were cast off by his rebellious crew in an open boat, and the mutineers, under the command of Christian, established them- selves in half-savage life on Pitcairn's Island, where their descen- dants were recently living. Among the less commonly read of Byron's longer poems we may mention the Age of Bronze, a vehement satirical declamation ; the Curse of Minerva, directed against the spoliation of the frieze of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin; the Lament of Tasso, and the Prophecy of Dante, the latter written in the difficult terza rima, the first attempt of any 262 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. English poet to employ that measure. The Dream is in some respects the most touching of Byron's minor works. It is the narrative, in the form of a vision, of his early love-sorrow for Mary Chaworth. There is hardly, in the whole range of litera- ture, so tender, so lofty, and so condensed a life-drama as that narrated in these verses. 436. The dramatic works of Byron are in many respects the precise opposite of what might a priori have been expected from the peculiar character of his genius. In form they are cold, severe, and lofty, partaking but little of the manner of Shak- speare. Artful involution of intrigue they have not; but though singularly destitute of powerful passion they are full of intense sentiment. The finest of them is Manfred, which, however, is not so much a drama as a dramatic poem; and consists not of action represented in dialogue, but of a series of sublime solilo- quies, in which the mysterious hero describes nature, and pours forth his despair and his self-pity. In this work, as well as in Cain, we see the full expression of Byron's sceptical spirit, and the tone of half-melancholy, half-mocking misanthropy which colors so much of his writings, and which was in him partly sincere and partly put on for effect. The more exclusively historical pieces Marino Faliero, the Two Foscari are de- rived from Venetian annals ; but neither in the one nor in the other has Byron clothed the events with that living reality which the subjects would have received even from Rowe or Ot- way. There is in these dramas a complete failure in variety of character; and the interest is concentrated on the obstinate harp- ing of the principal personages upon one topic their own wrongs and humiliations. In Sardanapalus the remoteness of the epoch chosen, and our total ignorance of the interior life of those times, remove the piece into the region of fiction. But the character of Myrrha, though beautiful, is an anachronism and an impossibility; and the antithetic contrast between the effeminacy and the sudden heroism in Sardanapalus belongs rather to satire or to moral disquisition than to tragedy. Wer- ner, a piece of domestic interest, is bodily borrowed, as far as regards its incidents, and even much of its dialogue, from the Hungarian's Story in Miss Lee's 'Canterbury Tales;' indeed, Bvron's share in its composition extends little farther than the cutting up of Miss Lee's prose into tolerably regular, but often very indifferent lines. A. D. 1779-1852. THOMAS MOOEE. 263 437. Don Juan, written in the ottava r/wa, is the longest, the most singular, and in some respects the most characteristic, of Byron's poems. It is, indeed, one of the most significant pro- ductions of the age of revolution and scepticism which preceded its appearance. The outline of the story is the old Spanish le- gend of Don Juan de Tenorio, upon which have been founded so many dramatic works, among the rest the Festin de Pierre of Moliere and the immortal opera of Mozart. The fundamental idea of the atheist and voluptuary enabled Byron to carry his hero through various adventures, serious and comic, to exhibit his unrivalled power of description, and left him unfettered by any necessities of time and place. Even in the imperfect state in which it was left, it consists of sixteen cantos, and there is no reason why it should not have been indefinitely extended It was the author's intention to bring his hero's adventures to a regular termination, but so desultory a series of incidents has no real coherency. The merit of this extraordinary poem is the richness of ideas, thoughts, and images ; its witty allusion and sarcastic reflection ; and above all, the constant passage from the loftiest and tenderest tone of poetry to the most familiar and mocking style. The tone of morality is throughout very low and selfish, even materialistic; but in spite of much superficial flippancy, this poem contains an immense mass of profound and melancholy satire ; and in a very large number of serious pas- sages Byron has shown a power, picturesqueness, and pathos which in other works may indeed be paralleled, but cannot be surpassed. 408. THOMAS MOORE (1779-1852), the personal friend and biographer of Byron, was born in Dublin, of humble paren- tage. (278-282) After distinguishing himself at the Univer- sity of Dublin, he passed over to London, nominally with the intention of studying law in the Temple ; but he soon appeared before the public as the translator of the Odes of Anacrcon, a task for which his elegant and varied, though perhaps not very profound, scholarship rendered him sufficiently fit. This work was published by subscription, and dedicated to the Prince Regent; and immediately introduced Moore into that gay and fashionable society of which he remained all his life a somewhat too assiduous frequenter. His dignity of character, perhaps, suffered from his passion for the frivolous triumphs of fashion- able circles ; but Moore was during his whole life the spoiled 264 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. child of popularity. In 1804 he obtained a small government post in the island of Bermuda, which, indeed, enabled him to 'visit America and the Antilles, and drew from him some of the most sparkling of his early poems. Neglecting the duties of his station, he became responsible, by the dishonesty of a subordi- nate, for a considerable sum of public money. This claim of the Crown he afterwards discharged by his literary labor; and nearly the whole of his long life was devoted to the production of a rapid succession of compositions, both in prose and verse, some of which obtained an immense and all a respectable success. As an Irishman and Catholic, Moore was naturally a Whig, " and something more;" which circumstance supplied the biting and yet pleasant sarcasm which seasons his political pasquinades. He spent the latter part of his life in a cottage near Bowood, the residence of the Marquess of Lansdowne, who had cherished his friendship. 439. The poetical, which is also the larger, portion of Moore's writings consists chiefly of lyrics, whether serious or comic, the most celebrated collection among them being the Irish Melodies. The version of Anacreon, though tolerably faithful in the gen- eral rendering of the original, is far too brilliant and ornamental in its language to give a correct idea of the manner of the Greek poet. In his juvenile poems, as well as in the collection pub- lished under the pseudonyme of Thomas Little, in the produc- tions suggested by his visit to America and the West Indies, and in the Odes and Epistles, we see that ingenious and ever- watchful invention which forms a prominent characteristic of Moore's genius; and also the strongly erotic and voluptuous tendency of sentiment, which is sometimes carried beyond the bounds of good taste and morality. 440. The Irish Melodies, a collection of about one hundred and twenty-five songs, (279-282} were composed in order to furnish appropriate words to a great number of beautiful na- tional airs, some of great antiquity, which had been degraded by becoming gradually associated with lines often vulgar and not always descent. Patriotism, love, and conviviality form the subject-matter of these charming lyrics ; their versification has never been surpassed for melody and neatness : the language is always clear, appropriate, and concise, and sometimes reaches a high degree of majesty, vigor, or tenderness. Though Moore is destitute of the intense sincerity of Burns, or of that exquisite A. D. 1779-1852. THOMAS MOORE. 265 sensibility to popular feeling which makes Beranger the darling of the middle and lower classes of France, jet he appeals, as they do, to the universal sentiments of his countrymen, and his popularity is proportionally great. The National Airs, which were intended to be set to tunes peculiar to various countries, exhibit the same exquisite musical sensibility and the same neat- ness of expression as the Irish Melodies ; but they are naturally inferior to them in intensity of patriotic feeling. A small col- lection of Sacred Songs affords frequent examples both of the merits and defects of Moore's lyrical genius, though the latter are perhaps more prominent as destructive occasionally of the lofty religious tone which the subject required him to maintain. All these collections, however, exhibit a high polish, an almost fastidious finish of style, which makes them models of perfection in their peculiar manner. 44 L The political squibs of Moore were directed against the Tory party in general, and were showered with peculiar vivacity and stinging effect upon the Regent, afterwards George IV., Lord Eldon, Castlereagh, and all those who were opposed to the granting of any relaxation to the Irish Catholics. His Odes on Cash, Corn, and Catholics, his Fables for the Holy Alliance, show an inexhaustible invention of quaint and ingenious ideas, and the power of bringing the most apparently remote allusions to bear upon the person or thing selected for attack. Some of the most celebrated of these brilliant pasquinades were combined into a sort of story, as for example the Fudge Family in Paris, purporting to be a series of letters written from France just at the period of the Restoration of the Bourbons. Nothing can be more animated, brilliant, and humorous than the description of the motley life and the giddy whirl of amusement in Paris at that memorable moment ; and the whole is seasoned with such a multitude of personal and political allusions, that the Fudge Family will probably ever retain its popularity, as both a social and political sketch of a most interesting episode in modern European history. 442. The longer and more ambitious poems of Moore are JLaila Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, the former being im- measurably the better, both as regards the interest of the story and the power with which it is treated. The plan of Lalla Rookh is original and happy; it consists of a little prose love- tale describing the journey of a beautiful Oriental princess from 266 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. Delhi to Bucharia, where she is to meet her betrothed husband, the king of the latter country. The prose portion of the work is inimitably beautiful; the whole style is sparkling with Ori- ental gems, and perfumed, as it were, with Oriental musk and roses : and the very abuse of brilliancy and of voluptuous lan- guor, which in another kind of composition might be regarded as meretricious, only adds to the Oriental effect. The four poems to which the above story forms a setting are the Veiled Prophet, the Fire Worshippers, Paradise and the Peri, (278} and the Light of the Harem; all, of course, of an Eastern character, and the two first in some degree historical in their subject. The longest and most ambitious is the first, which is w r ritten in the rhymed heroic couplet, while the others are com- posed in that irregular animated versification which Walter Scott and Byron had brought into fashion. 443. The Loves of the Angels, the only remaining poem of of any length, need not detain us long. It is manifestly inferior to Lalla Rookh, not only in the impracticable nature of its sub- ject, but in the monotony of its treatment. The fundamental idea is based upon that famous and much misunderstood pas- sage of the Book of Genesis, where it is said, that in the prime- val ages "the sons of God" became enamoured of " the daugh- ters of men," the issue of which connection was the Giants. Moore introduces three of these angels, who by yielding to an earthly love have forfeited the privileges of their celestial na- ture, and who relate, each in his turn, the story of their passion and its punishment. This poem was written during Moore's retirement to Paris, and bears some traces of the influence of Byron's somewhat similar, and not much more successful pro- duction, Heaven and Earth, which was in its turn generated to a certain degree by the writings of Shelley. 444.. The chief prose works of Moore are the three biogra- phies of Sheridan, Byron, and Lord Edwa:*d Fitzgerald, and the tale of the Epicurean. The last, a narrative of the first ages- of Christianity, describes the conversion,, under the influence of love, of a young Athenian philosopher, who travels into Egypt, and is initiated into the mysterious worship of Isis. Moore's biographies, especially that of Byron, are of great value. It is particularly valuable from consisting, as far as possible, of ex- tracts from Byron's own journals and correspondence, so that the subject of the biography is delineated in his own words, A,D. 1792-1822. PERCY BYSSEE SHELLEY. 267 Moore furnishing little more than the arrangement and the con- necting matter. 445. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822) was of an ancient and opulent family, the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, and \vas born at Field Place, near Horsham, in Sussex, August 4, 1792. (283-285} At Eton his sensitive mind was shocked by the sight of boyish tyranny ; and he went to Oxford full of ab- horrence for the cruelty and bigotry which he fancied pervaded all the relations of civilized life. An eager and desultory stu- dent, he rapidly filled his mind with the sceptical arguments against Christianity; and having published a tract avowing atheistic principles, he was expelled from the University. This scandal, together with a marriage he contracted with a beautiful girl, his inferior in rank, caused him to be renounced by his family. After a few years he separated from his wife, who sub- sequently terminated her existence in a melancholy manner by suicide; and he contracted during his wife's lifetime a new con- nection with the daughter of Godwin; and having induced his family to make him a considerable annual allowance, he was from thenceforth relieved from pecuniary difficulties. The deli- cate state of his health rendered it advisable that he should leave England for a warmer climate, and the remainder of his life was passed abroad, with only one short interruption. In Switzerland he became acquainted with Byron, and the ardor of his character and the splendor of his genius undoubtedly ex- erted a powerful influence on his mighty contemporary. He afterwards migrated to Italy, where he kept up an intimate com- panionship with Byron, still continuing to pour forth his strange and enchanting poetry in indefatigable profusion. He resided principally at Rome, and composed there many of his finest productions. His death was early and tragic. As he was re- turning in a small yacht from Leghorn, in company with a friend and a single boatman, his vessel was caught in a squall, and went down with all on board in the Gulf of Spezzia. Thus perished this great poet, at the age of thirty. 440. Shelley was all his life, both as a poet and as a man, a dreamer, a visionary: his mind was filled with glorious but un- real phantoms of the possible perfectibility of mankind. The very intensity of his sympathy with his kind clouded his rea- son ; and he fell into the common error of all enthusiasts, of supposing that, if the present organization of society were swept 268 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. away, a millennium of virtue and happiness must ensue. As a poet he was undoubtedly gifted with genius of a very high order, an immense, though somewhat vaporous richness and fertility of imagination, an intense fire and energy in the reproduction of what he conceived, and a command over all the resources of metrical harmony such as no English poet has surpassed. His career commences with hieen Mab, written by the poet when but eighteen years old, a wild phantasmagoria of beautiful de- scription and fervent declamation, in that irregular unrhymed versification of which Southey's Thalaba is an example. The defect of this poem, as indeed of many of Shelley's other com- positions, is a vagueness of meaning which often becomes abso- lutely unintelligible. 447. Perhaps the finest, as it is the completest and most dis- tinct, of Shelley's longer poems is Alastor, or the Spirit of Sol- itude, in which he depicts the sufferings of such a character as his own, a being of the warmest sympathies, and of the loftiest aspirations, driven into solitude and despair by the ingratitude of his kind, who are incapable of understanding and sympathiz- ing with his aims. The Revolt of /$/;, Hellas, and the Witch of Atlas, are works which belong, more or less, to the category of Queen Mab ; violent invectives against kingcraft, priestcraft, religion, and marriage, alternating with airy and exquisite pic- tures of scenes and beings of superhuman and unearthly splen- dor. The defect of these poems is the extreme obscurity of their general drift. Though particular objects stand out with the viv- idness and splendor of reality, and are lighted up with a daz- zling glow of imagination, the effect of the whole is singularly vague and uncertain. 448. Two important works of Shelley are dramatic in form the Prometheus Unbotind and the Cenci. The former, however, is rather a lyric in dialogue than a drama, while the latter is a regular tragedy. The Prometheus is one of the wildest and most unintelligible of all this poet's works, though it contains num- berless passages of the highest beauty and sublimity. The fun- damental idea is based upon the gigantic drama of JEschylus, of which it is intended to be the complement; but it breathes throughout that strange union of fierce hostility to social sys- tems and intense love for humanity in the abstract which forms so singular an anomaly in the writings of Shelley. Many of the descriptive passages are sublime ; and noble bursts of lyric har- A.D. 1796-1821. JOHN KEATS. 269 monj alternate with the wildest personifications and the fiercest invective. The Cenci is a regular tragedy on the severe and sculptural plan of Alfieri. It is founded on the famous crime of Beatrice di Cenci, driven to parricide by the diabolical wicked- ness of her father, for which she suffered the penalty of death at Rome ; but in spite of several powerful and striking scenes, the piece is of a morbid and unpleasing character, though the lan- guage is vigorous and masculine. 449. The narrative poem of Rosalind and Helen is an elab- orate pleading against the institution of marriage, an intense and almost amusing hostility to which was one of Shelley's pet crazes. In the poem of Adonais the poet has given us a beauti- ful and touching lament on the early death of Keats, whose short career gave such a noble foretaste of poetical genius as would have made him one of the greatest writers of his age. One of the most imaginative, and at the same time one of the obscurest, of Shelley's poems is the Sensitive Plant, which com- bines the qualities of mystery and fancifulness to the highest degree, perpetually stimulating the reader with ar desire to pene- trate the meaning symbolized in the luxuriant description of the garden and the Plant, and filling him with the richest imagery and description. Many of his detached lyrics are of inexpressi- ble beauty, as the Ode to a Skylark, (283} which breathes the very rapture of the bird's soaring song, and the wild but pictu- resque imagery of the Cloud, besides a number of minor but not less beautiful productions. 450. JOHN KEATS (1796-1821) was born in Moorfields, (286- 280} London, and was apprenticed to a surgeon in his fifteenth year. During his apprenticeship he devoted most of his time to poetry, and in 1817 he published a volume of juvenile poems. This was followed in 1818 by his long poem Endymion, (289} which was'severely censured by the Quarterly Rev ierv, an attack which has been somewhat erroneously described as the cause of his death. But he had a constitutional tendency to consump- tion, which would most likely have developed itself under any circumstances. He went for the recovery of his health to Rome, where he died on the 24th of February, 1821. In the previous year he had published another volume of poems, Lamia, Isa- bella, &c., in which was included the fragment of his remarkable poem entitled Hyperion. (287} 451. It was the misfortune of Keats to be either extravagantly 270 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. praised or unmercifully condemned. That which is most re- markable in his works is the wonderful profusion of figurative language, often exquisitely beautiful and luxuriant, but some- times purely fantastical and far-fetched. This peculiarity Keats carries to extravagance one word, one image, one rhyme sug- gests another, till we quite lose sight of the original idea, which is smothered in its OAvn luxuriance. Keats deserves high praise for one very original merit : he has treated the classical my- thology in a way absolutely new, representing the Pagan deities not as mere abstractions of art, nor as mere creatures of popular belief, but giving them passions and affections like our own, though highly purified and idealized. In Hyperion, in the Ode to Pan (which appears in "Endymion"), in the verses on a Grecian Urn, (288} we find a strain of beautiful classic im- agery, combined with a perception of natural loveliness inex- pressibly luxuriant, rich, and delicate. Such of Keats's poems as are founded on more modern subjects The Eve of St. Agnes for example, or The Pot of Basil, a beautiful anecdote versified from Boccacio are, to our taste, inferior to those of his produc- tions in which the scenery and personages are mythological. Keats was a true poet. If we consider his extreme youth and delicate health, his solitary and interesting self-instruction, the severity of the attacks made upon him by hostile and powerful critics, and, above all, the original richness and picturesqueness of his conceptions and imagery, even when they run to waste, he appears to be one of the greatest of the young poets re- sembling the Milton of Lycidas, or the Spenser of the Tears of the Muses. 452. Though the ottava rima was employed in early times by more* than one poet of distinction, the writer whose compositions immediately suggested it to Lord Byron was JOHN -HOOKHAM FRERE (1769-1846), assistant of Canning in the management of the famous Anti-Jacobin, and honorably known as a translator of Aristophanes. It was in the above metre that he wrote his Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work by Wil- liam and Robert Whistlecraft, &c., a burlesque of great celeb- rity when it first appeared in 1817, and for some time after- wards. A writer of much the same calibre as Frere, though perhaps superior in some respects, is WINTHROP MACK WORTH PRAED (1802-1839), son of Mr. Serjeant Praed, and a politician of great promise, whose premature death was a loss alike to the A. D. 1777-1814. THOMAS CAMPBELL. 271 nation and to literature. As a writer of vers de societe, a kind of composition in which the English language is unusually rich, he has had few equals, and perhaps no superior. His Belle of the Ball-Room and Letter of Advice are not excelled even by Moore, whose name is perhaps the highest in this particular de- partment. Indeed for sparkle, for airy elegance, for playful, if not over deep, humor, and for flowing grace, he is not likely ever to be excelled. 458. Our limited space will allow no more than a mention of the Pleasures of Memory of SAMUEL ROGERS (393} (1763-1855^, and the Rejected Addresses of JAMES and HORACE SMITH. (231) 454. THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844), (29O-293) who was born on the 27th of July, 1777, at Glasgow, was educated at the University in that city, where he distinguished himself by his translations from the Greek poets. In 1799, when he was only in his twentv-second year, he published his Pleasures of Hope, (29O) which was received with a burst of enthusiasm as hearty as afterwards welcomed the Lay of the Last Minstrel and Childe Harold. Shortly afterwards he travelled abroad, where the warlike scenes he witnessed, and the battle-fields he visited, suggested some noble lyrics. To the seventh edition of the Pleasures of Hofc, published in iSoe, were added the magnifi- cent verses on the battle of Hohcnlinden, (293) Te Mariners of England, (292) the most popular of his songs, and LochieVs Warning: In the following year he settled in London, married, and commenced in earnest the pursuit of literature as a profes- sion. His works were written chiefly for the booksellers, and with the exception of his Gertrude of Wyoming, which appeared in 1809, do not require any notice in a history of literature. In 1843 he retired to Boulogne, where he died in the following year. His body was brought over to England and interred in Westminster Abbey. 455. In the circle of poets with Byron, Shelley, and Keats, outliving by many years the latest of these, must be mentioned the names of Leigh Hunt and Walter Savage Landor. 45G. JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT (1784-1859) was born at Southgate, Middlesex, and received his education at Christ's Hospital, which he left " in the same rank, at the same age, and 'for the same reasons, as Lamb." In 1805 he joined his brother in editing a newspaper called the News, and shortly afterwards 'established the Examiner, which still exists. A conviction for 272 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. libel on the Prince Regent detained him in prison for two years, the happiest portion of his life; he was free from the worry and care which never afterwards forsook him. Soon after he left prison he published the Story of Rimini, an Italian tale in verse (1816), which contains some exquisite poetry, both as to conception and execution. About 1818 he started the Indicator, a weekly paper, in imitation of the Spectator; and in 1822 he went to Italy, to assist Lord Byron and Shelley in their pro- jected paper called the Liberal. Shelley died soon after Hunt's arrival in Italy; and though Hunt was kindly received by Byron, and lived for a time in his house, there was no congeniality be- tween them. Returning to England he continued to write for periodicals, and published various poems from time to time, of which one of the most celebrated was Captain Sword and Cap- tain Pen. Leight Hunt's poetry is graceful, sprightly, and full of fancy. Though not possessing much soul and emotion, it has true life and genius ; while here and there his verse is lit up with wit, or glows with tenderness and grace. His prose writ- ings consist of essays, collected under the titles of The Indica- tor and The Companion ; Sir Ralph Esher, a novel ; The Old Court Suburb ; his lives of Wyckerley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, prefixed to his edition of their dramatic writings, and many others. 457. The father of WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (1775-1864^ was a gentleman of good family and wealthy circumstances residing in Warwickshire. The son entered Rugby at an early age, and thence proceeded to Trinity College, Oxford; but he left the University without a degree. In 1795 his first work a volume of poems appeared, followed early in the present century by a translation into Latin of Gebir, one of his own English poems. Landor had no small facility in classical composition, and he appeared to have the power of transporting himself into the times and sentiments of Greece and Rome. This is still more clearly seen in the Heroic Idylls (1820) in Latin verse : and the reproduction of Greek thought in The Hellenics is one o'f the most successful attempts of its kind. Shortly after the death of his father, the poet took up his abode on the Continent, where he resided during the rest of his life, with occasional visits to his native country. The republican spirit which led him to take part as a volunteer in the Spanish rising of 1808 continued to burn fiercely to the last. He even went so far as to defend tyran- A. D. 1799-1845. THOMAS HOOD. 273 nicide, and boldly offered a pension to the widow of any one who would murder a despot. Between 1820 and 1830 he was engaged upon his greatest work, Imaginary Conversations of Literary Mtn and Statesmen. This was followed in 1831 by Poems. Let- ters by a Conservative, Satire on Satirists (1836), Pentameron and Pentalogue (1837), and a long series in prose and poetry, of which the chief are the Hellenics enlarged and completed, Dry Sticks Fagoted, and The Last Fruit off an Old Tree. He died on the iyth September, 1864, at Florence, an exile from his country, misunderstood from the very individuality of his genius by the majority of his countrymen, but highly appreciated by those who could rightly estimate the works he has left behind" him. 458. THOMAS HOOD (1799-1845) has unfortunately been re- garded only as a humorist; and as the English reader would accept from him nothing but wit and humor, the most valuable of his writings are in danger of being forgotten. (322, 323} He was associated with the brilliant circle who then contributed to the London Magazine ; among whom were Lamb, Hazlitt, the Smiths, De Quincey, and Reynolds. The latter of these was united with Hood in the publication of the Odes and Ad- dresses, which appeared anonymously, and were ascribed by Cole- ridge to Lamb. These were followed by Whims and Oddities. Hood became at once a popular writer; but in the midst of his success a firm failed which involved him in its losses. The poet, disdaining to seek the aid of bankruptcy, emulated the example of Scott, and determined by the economy of a life in Germany to pay off the debt which he had thus involuntarily contracted. In 1835 the family took up their residence in Coblenz ; from thence removed to Ostend (1837) ; and returned to London in 1840. He subsequently became editor of the New Monthly in 1841, and held it until 1843, when the first number of his own Magazine was issued. A pension was obtained for him, with reversion to his wife and daughter in 1844; an< ^ ne died upon the 3d of May in the following year. 459. Hood stands very high among the poets of the second order. He was not a creative genius. He has given little indi- cation of the highest imaginative faculty; but his fancy was most delicate, and full of graceful play. His most distinctive mark was the thorough humanity of his thoughts and expres- sions. His poems are amongst the most valuable contributions 18 274 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXIV. to English literature of sympathy with, and insight into, human life and character. He possessed in a most remarkable degree the power of perceiving the ridiculous and the odd. Words seemed to break up into the most queer and droll syllables. His wit was caustic, and yet it bore with itself its remedy. It was never coarse. An impurity even in suggestion cannot be found in Hood's pages. With the humor was associated a most tender pathos. The Deathbed (323) is one of the most affecting little poems in our language, and is equalled only by another of his ballads entitled Love's Eclipse. Amongst his larger works, the Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, and Hero and Leander, are the most sustained and elaborate. The descriptive pieces in both are full of the most careful observation of nature, and most mu- sical expression of her beauties. The best known of his poems are The Bridge of Sighs, (322} Eugene Aram, and the Song 1 of the Shirt. 460. However inferior the present age may be in some re- spects to many of its predecessors, in one at least it is vastly , superior to all others the excellence of its female intellects. Not to speak of CAROLINE BOWLES (the second Mrs. Southey), Mrs. HEMANS, (321} LETITIA ELIZABETH LANDON (better known perhaps by her signature of L. E. L.), \ve may say of ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1809-1861) that she has gained for herself a place among poets to which not one of her own sex has ever attained. (324:} Her first acknowledged work was a translation of the Prometheus Bound, which was published in 1833. Next appeared a collection of poems in 1844, which es- tablished her reputation as the strongest, most high-toned and most melodious of female poets. Her sympathy with Italian aspirations, which enters so largely into the character of her best works, dates from her marriage with Robert Browning, when her failing health compelled her to reside in Italy. To this circumstance we owe her t C as a Guidi Windows, and her Poems before Congress, which appeared respectively in 1851 and 1860. Incomparably her greatest work, however, and in the estimation of some the noblest poem of the present century, is Aurora Leigh, published in 1856. This she herself pronounces " the most mature of her works, and the one into which her highest convictions upon Life and Art have entered." In the same year she left England for the last time, dying at Florence, June 29, 1861. A. D. 1770-1850. WORDSWORTH. 275 CHAPTER XXV. THE LAKE SCHOOL. WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND SOUTHEY. 461. \VILLIAM\VORDSWORTH (1770-1850), the founder of the so-called Lake School of poetry, was born at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, April 7, 1770. (204-300^) In his ninth year he was sent to a school at tfawkshead, in the most picturesque dis- trict of Lancashire, where his relish for the beauties of creation, to which he mainly owes his place among poets, was early man- ifested and rapidly developed. After taking his degree at Cam- bridge in 1791, he went over to France, and eagerly embraced the ideas of the wildest champions of liberty in that country. His political sentiments, however, became gradually modified, till in later life they settled down into steady Conservatism in Church and State. In 1793 he produced to the world two little poems, An Evening Walk, and Descriptive Sketches, of which the metre and language are in the school of Pope ; but they are the work of a promising scholar, and not of a master. In the following year he completed the Story of Salisbury Plain, or, Ghilt and Sorrow, which did not appear entire till 1842, but of which he published an extract in 1798, under the title of The Female Vagrant. In regard to time it is separated from the Descriptive Sketches by a span, but in respect of merit they are parted by a gulf. He had ceased to write in the train of Pope; and composed in the stanza of his later favorite Spenser. His second experiment was the tragedy of The Borderers, which was considered, when it appeared, an unqualified failure. In June, 1797, Coleridge formed a close friendship with Wordsworth and his sister; and to furnish funds for a journey to Germany the two friends published their Lyrical Ballads, the first piece in which was Coleridge's Anc\ent Mariner, but several of the remaining poems were by Wordsworth. 462. On their return to England in 1798 Wordsworth and his sister settled in the lake district, from which circumstance he 276 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXV. and his friends, Coleridge, Southej, De Quincey, and Wilson, received the name of the Lake School. He now set himself to work, both by precept and practice, to inculcate his peculiar views of poetry, which encountered for a long time the fieixe hostility of the critics. In 1799 he commenced The Prelude, which was not published in full till after his death. In 1800 he published an enlarged edition of the Ballads, in which thirty- seven pieces were added to the original collection. 4G3. The year 1802 was arueventful one to the poet. A consid- erable accession of fortune, which had been due to his father at: the time of his death, enabled him to marry a lady to whom he had been long attached, Mary Hutchinson, his sister's friend. In 1807 he gave to the world two new volumes of Poems, which contained the Song" at the Feast of Brougham Castle, and many more of his choicest pieces. Here appeared his first sonnets, and several of them are still ranked among his happiest efforts in that department. Wordsworth's next publication was in prose. His indignation rose at the grasping tyranny of Napo- leon ; and in 1809 he put forth a pamphlet against the Conven- tion of Cintra. The sentiments were spirit-stirring, but the manner of conveying them was the reverse, and his protest passed unheeded. His great work, The Excursion, appeared in 1814. This is a fragment of a projected great moral epic, dis- cussing and solving the mightiest questions concerning God, nature, and man, our moral constitution, our duties, and our hopes. Its dramatic interest is exceedingly small ; its structure is very inartificial ; and the characters represented in it are de- void of life and probability. On the other hand, so sublime are the subjects on which they reason, so lofty is their tone, and so deep a glow of humanity is perceptible throughout, that no honest reader can study this grand composition without ever- increasing reverence and delight. 464. In 1815 appeared The White Doe of Rylstone, the only narrative poem of any length which Wordsworth ever wrote. The incidents turn chiefly on the complete ruin of a north- country family in the "Rising of the North " in 1569. Peter Bell was published in 1819, and was received with a shout of ridicule. The poet stated in the dedication that the work had been com- pleted twenty years, and that he had continued correcting it in the interval to render it worthy of a permanent place in our national literature. The *work is meant to be serious, and is A. D. 1770-1850. WORDSWORTH. 277 certainly not facetious, but there is so much farcical absurdity of detail and language. that the mind is revolted. This poem was followed by The Wagoner, which was not more successful. Between 1830 and 1840 the flood which floated him into favor rose to its height. Scott and Byron had in succession entranced the world. They had now withdrawn, and no third king arose to demand homage. It was in the lull which ensued that the less thrilling notes of the Lake bard obtained a hearing. It was dur- ing this time that he published his Ecclesiastical Sonnets and Tarro-w Revisited; and in 1842 he brought forth a complete col- lection of his poems. His fame was now firmly established On the death of Souchey in 1843 he was made Poet Laureate. He died on April 23, 1850, when he had just completed his eightieth year. 4G5. The poetry of Wordsworth has passed through two phases of criticism, in the first of which his defects were chiefly noted, and in the second his merits. Already we have arrived at the third era, when the majority of readers are just to both. Perhaps the fairest estimate that has yet appeared of Words- worth's poetry is given by an acute critic in the Quarterly Re- view : %; It is constantly asserted that he effected a reform in the language of poetry, that he found the public bigoted to a vicious and flowery diction, which seemed to mean a great deal and really meant nothing, and that he led them back to sense and simplicity. The claim appears to us to be a fanciful as- sumption, refuted by the facts of literary history. Feebler poetasters were no doubt read when Wordsworth began to write than would now command an audience, however small ; but they had no real hold upon the public, and Cowper was the only popular bard of the day. His masculine and unadorned Eng- lish was relished in every cultivated circle in the land, and Wordsworth was the child and not the father of a reaction, which, after all, has been greatly exaggerated. Goldsmith was the most celebrated of Cowper's immediate predecessors, and it will not be pretended that The Deserted Village and The Trav- eller are among the specimens of inane phraseology. Burns had died before Wordsworth had attracted notice. The wonder- ful Peasant's performances were admired by none more than by Wordsworth himself: were they not already far more popular than the Lake-poet's have ever been or ever will be ? and were they, in any respect or degree, tinged with the absurdities of the Hayley school? . . . Whatever influence Wordsworth may 278 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXV. have exercised on poetic style, be it great or small, was by de- viating in practice from the principles of composition for which he contended. Both his theory, and the poems which illustrate it, continue to this hour to be all but universally condemned. He resolved to write as the lower orders talked ; and though where the poor are the speakers it would be in accordance with strict dramatic propriety, the system would not be tolerated in serious poetry. Wordsworth's rule did not stop at the wording of dialogues. He maintained that the colloquial language of rustics was the most philosophical and enduring which the dic- tionary affords, and the fittest for verse of every description. . . . When his finest verse is brought to the test of his prin- ciple, they agree no better than light and darkness. Mere is his way of describing the effects of the pealing organ in King's College Chapel, with its ' self-poised roof, scooped into ten thousand cells : ' ' But from the arms of silence list! O list! The music bursteth into second life; The notes luxuriate, every stone is kissed With si ni nd, or ghost of sound, in mazy strife! ' 4GG. "This is to write like a splendid poet, but it is not to write as rustics talk. A second canon laid down by Wordsworth was, that poetic diction is, or ought to be, in all respects the same with the language of prose ; and as prose has a wide range, and numbers among its triumphs such luxuriant elo- quence as that of Jeremy Taylor, the principle, if just, would be no less available for the advocates of ornamental verse than for the defence of the homely style of the Lyrical Ballads. But the proposition is certainly too broadly stated ; and, though the argument holds good for the adversary, because the phraseology which is not too rich for prose can never be considered too tawdry for poetry, yet it will not warrant the conclusions of Wordsworth, that poetry should never rise above prose, or dis- dain to descend to its lowest level." 4G7. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834) was born at Ottery-St.-Mary, in 'Devonshire, and was educated at Christ's Hospital; from whence he proceeded to Jesus -College, Cam- bridge. (3OJL-3O7) Leaving the University in his second year he enlisted in the I5th Dragoons, under the assumed name of Comberbacke. One of the officers, learning his real history, communicated with his friends, by whom his discharge was at A. D. 1772-1834. 8. T. COLERIDGE. 279 once effected. After forming a wild scheme, in conjunction with Southey, for founding a model republic in North America, to which they gave the name of "Pantisocracy," and abandon- ing it for want of funds, he then turned his attention to litera- ture. He had previously written the first act of the Fall of Robespierre, of which Southey composed the second and third acts (published in 1794). In 1795 he married Miss Sarah Fricker of Bristol, a sister of Southey's wife. During the first three years after his marriage he lived in Wordsworth's neighborhood, and his share in the celebrated Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, has been already mentioned. At this period also his tragedy, Remorse, was written. In 1798 Coleridge visited Ger- many, where he studied the language and literature. After his return he took up his abode in the Lake District, near Words- worth and Southey. He subsequently spent some time in Malta, where he was secretary to Sir Alexander Ball in 1804 and 1805. In 1810 he quitted the Lakes, leaving his wife and children wholly dependent upon Southey, a striking illustration of his well-known indifference to personal and pecuniary obligations. He then took up his residence in London, finding a home in the house of Mr. Gillman at Highgate, where he died, July 25, 1834. 4G8. Coleridge began life as a Unitarian and republican ; his intellectual powers were chiefly formed in the transcendental schools of Germany; but he ultimately became from conviction a most sincere adherent to the doctrines of the Anglican church, and an enthusiastic defender of our monarchical constitution. Though the lyrics to which we have alluded (the finest of which are the odes On the Departing Tear, and that supposed to be written At sunrise in the Valley of Chamouni} (3O2) are some- what injured by their air of effort, they are indubitably works of singular richness and exquisitely melodized language. In his translation of Schiller's Wallenstein Coleridge was most suc- cessful. With almost all readers it will for ever have the charm of an original work. Indeed, many beautiful parts of the trans- lation are exclusively the property of the English poet, who used a manuscript copy of the German text before its publication by the author. That Coleridge had no power of true dramatic creation is strongly proved by his tragedy of Remorse, in which he has failed to produce a drama which either excites curiosity or moves any strong degree of pity. He was, however, a consum- mate critic of the dramatic productions of others. Till he wrote, t>80 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXV. deep and universal as had been the admiring love of the English for Shakspeare, there still remained, in their judgment, some- thing of that de /taut en bas tone which characterizes all the criticisms anterior to Coleridge's Lectures on Shakspeare. Cole- ridge first showed that the creator of Hamlet and Othello was not only the greatest genius, but also the most consummate artist, that ever existed. He was the first to make some ap- proach to the discovery of those laws which, expressly or in- tuitively, governed the evolutions of the Shakspearian drama the first to give us some faint idea of the dimensions, the length, and breadth, and depth, of that huge sea of truth and beauty. 4G9. The most popular of Coleridge's poems, as The Ancient Mariner, (3O4) Christabel, and the fragment called Kubla Khan, (3O3) are of a mystic, unreal character : indeed, Cole- ridge asserted that the last was actually composed in a dream an affirmation which may well be believed, for it is a thousand times more unintelligible than the general run of dreams. Like everything that Coleridge ever wrote, the versification is ex- quisite. His language puts on every form, it expresses every sound; he almost writes to the eye and to the ear. In point of completeness, exquisite harmony of feeling, and unsurpassable grace of imagery and language, Coleridge has left nothing su- perior to the charming little poem entitled Love, or Genevicve. 470. Coleridge takes rank also as a psychologist, moralist, and general philosopher. The Friend, the Lay Sermons, the Aids to Reflection, and the Church and State, are works which have exercised a great influence upon the intellectual character of his generation. But his chief reputation through life was founded less upon his writings than upon his conversation, or rather what may be called his conversational oratory, which must have resembled those disquisitions of the Greek philosophers of which the dialogues of Plato give some idea. It is in his innumerable fragments, in his rich but desultory remains (published posthu- mously under the title of Literary Remains}, in casual remarks scribbled like Sibylline leaves, often on the margin of borrowed books, and in imperfectly-reported conversations, that we must look for proofs of Coleridge's immense but incompletely recorded powers. From a careful study of these we shall conceive a high admiration of his genius, and a deep regret at the fragmentary and desultory manifestations of his powers. A. ft. 1774-1843. EGBERT SOUTHE F. 281 471. ROBERT SC&THEY (1774-1843) was born at Bristol, where his father carried on the business of a draper. (3OS-31J.) He was sent to Westminster at the age of fourteen, but he had had no proper classical training previously, and the defect was never repaired. After spending four years at Westminster he was ex- pelled for writing an article against flogging in public schools, which appeared in the Flagellant, a periodical commenced by Southey and his friend and schoolfellow, Grosvenor Bedford. The following year he went to Oxford, and was entered at Bal- liol. His religious opinions preventing him from entering the Church, he lingered at Oxford, until Coleridge appeared with his scheme of " Pantisocracy," already related. Quitting Ox- ford, Southey attempted to raise by authorship funds for the American scheme, and in 1794 published at Bath, in conjunc- tion with Robert Lovell, a small volume of poems, which brought neither fame nor profit. His chief reliance, however, was on his epic poem Joan of Arc, composed in 1793, for which Joseph Cottle of Bristol, the patron of Coleridge, offered him lifty guineas. In November, 1795, Southey accompanied his uncle to Lisbon, having on the morning of his departure secretly united himself to Miss Fricker, a young lady to whom he had for some time been engaged. He returned six months after- wards, a.nd immediately commenced that life of patient literary toil from which he never swerved again while health and intel- lect remained. He had from the outset an allowance of o.ne hundred and sixty pounds a year from his friend Mr. Wynn, till he had obtained for him a pension of equal value from the Gov- ernment. Yet, with his talents and industry, he was constantly on the verge of poverty, and not even his philosophy and hope- fulness were always proof against the difficulties of his position. In 1804 he took up his residence at Greta Hall, near Keswick, in Cumberland, where he continued to reside for the remainder of his life. From being a sceptic and a republican, he became a firm believer in Christianity, and a stanch supporter of the Eng- lish Church and Constitution. In 1813 he was appointed poet- laureate, and in 183^ received a pension of three hundred pounds a year from the Government of Sir Robert Peel. During the last four years of his life he had sunk into a state of hopeless imbecility. He died March 21, 1843. ** 472. Southey's literary activity was prodigious. The list of his writings, published under his own name, amounts to one 282 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXV. hundred and nine volumes. In addition to tnese he contributed to the Annual Revie-M fifty-two articles, to the Foreign Quar- terly three, to the Quarterly ninety-four. The composition of these works was a small part of the labor they involved : they are all, even to his poems, books of research, which obliged him to turn over numerous volumes for the production of one. 473. Joan of Arc, the earliest of his long poems, was a juve- nile production published in 1795. It was received with favor by most of the critical journals on account of the republican doc- trines which it espoused. Madoc, which was completed in 1799, was not given to the world till 1805. Upon this poem he was contented to rest his fame. It is founded on one of the most absurd legends connected with the early history of America. Madoc is a Welsh prince of the twelfth century, who is repre- sented as making the discovery of the Western world; and his contests with the Mexicans, and ultimate conversion of that people from their cruel idolatry, form the main action of the poem, which, like Joan of Arc, is written in blank verse. Though the poem is crowded with scenes of more than possible splendor, of more than human cruelty, courage, and super- stition, the effect is singularly languid; and the exaggeration of prowess and suffering produces the same effect upon the mind as the extravagance of fiction in the two Oriental poems which we shall next notice. 474. Thalaba was published in 1801, and the Curse oj Kchama in 1810. The first is a tale of Arabian enchantment, full of ma- gicians, dragons, hippogriffs, and monsters; and in the second the poet has selected for his groundwork the still more unman- ageable mythology of the Hindoos. The poems are written in an irregular and wandering species of rhythm the Tkalaba altogether without rhyme ; and the language abounds' in an affected simplicity, and perpetual obtrusion of vulgar and puer- ile phraseology. 475. Kehama was followed, at an interval of four years, by Roderick, the Last of the Goths, a poem in blank verse, and of a much more modest and credible character than its predeces- sors. The subject is the punishment and repentance of the last Gothic King of Spain, whose vices, oppressions, and in partic- ulaffcan insult offered to the virtue of Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, incited that noble to betray his country to the Moors. A. D. 1774-1843. EGBERT SOUTHS Y. 283 470. On being appointed poet-laureate, Southey paid his tribute of Court adulation with an eagerness which showed how complete was his conversion from the political faith of his youthful days. His laureate odes exhibit a passionate hatred of his former liberal opinions which gives interest even to the ambitious monotony of these official lyrics. 477. Southey's prose works are very numerous and valuable on account of their learning; but the little Life of Nelson, (311} written to furnish young seamen with a simple narrative of the exploits of England's greatest naval hero, has perhaps never been equalled for the perfection of its style. In his other works the principal of which are The Book of the Church, The Lives of the British Admirals, The Life of Wesley, a History of Brazil, and a. History of the Peninsular Wat we find the same clear, vigorous English, and no less the strong prejudice and violent political and literary partiality, which so much detract from his many excellent qualities as a writer and as a man. 284 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. CHAPTER xXXVI. THE MODERN NOVELISTS. 478. THE department of English literature which has been cultivated during the latter half of the last and the commence- ment of the present century with the greatest assiduity and suc- cess, is undoubtedly that of prose fiction the romance and the novel. 479. To give an idea of the immense richness and fertility of this branch of our subject, it will be advisable to classify the authors and their productions into a few great general species ; which plan will be found, we trust, to secure clearness and aid the memory. The divisions which we propose are as follows : I. Romances properly so called; *'. c. works of narrative fiction, the adventures of which are generally of a picturesque and ro- mantic character, and the personages of a lofty and imposing kind. II. The vast class of pictures of society, whether invented or not. III. Oriental novels. IV. Naval and military novels. 480. I. ROMANCES. The impulse to this branch of compo- sition was first given by HORACE WALPOLE (1717-1797), (326} the fastidious dilettante and brilliant chronicler of the court scandal of his day; a man of singularly acute penetration, of sparkling epigrammatic style, but of a mind devoid of enthusiasm and elevation. He retired early from political life, and shut him- self up in his little fantastic Gothic castle of Strawberry Hill, to collect armor, medals, manuscripts, and painted glass ; and to chronicle with malicious assiduity, in his vast and brilliant cor- respondence, the absurdities, follies, and weaknesses of his day. The Castle of Otranto is a short tale, written with great rapidity and without preparation, in which the first successful attempt was made to take the Feudal Age as the period, and the passion of mysterious, superstitious terror as the prime mover, of an in- teresting fiction. The manners are totally absurd and unnatural, the heroine being one of those inconsistent portraits in which the sentimental languor of the eighteenth century is superadded A.D. 17C4-1851. LEWIS. MRS. SHELLEY. 285 to the female character of the Middle Ages in short, one of those incongruous contradictions which we meet in all the ro- mantic fictions before Scott. 481. The immense success of Walpole's original and cleverly- written tale encouraged other and more accomplished artists to follow in the same track. The great name of this class is ANN RADCLIFFE (1764-1823), whose numerous romances exhibit a sur- prising power over the emotions of fear and undefined mysterious suspense. Her two greatest works are The Romance of the For- est and The Mysteries of Udolpho. The scenery of her predilec- tion is that of Italy and the south of France; the ruined castles of the Pyrenees and Apennines form the theatre, and the dark passions of profligate Italian counts the principal moving power, of her wonderful fictions. The substance of them all is pretty nearly the same; mystery is the whole spell; the personages have no more individuality than the pieces of a chess-board ; but they are made the exponents of such terrible and intense fear, suffering, and suspense, that we sympathize with their fate as if they were real. 482. A class of writing apparently so easy was, of course, fol- lowed by a crowd of writers. Of these the most noteworthy are Lewis and Mrs. Shelley. MATTHEW GREGORY LEWIS (1775- 1818), a good natured, effeminate man of fashion, the friend of Byron, and one of the early literary advisers of Scott, was the first to introduce into England a taste for the infant German lit- erature of that day, with its spectral ballads and diablerie of all kinds. He was a man of lively and childish imagination; and besides his metrical translations of the ballads of Bilrger, and others of the same class, he published in his twentieth year a prose romance called The Monk, full of horrible crimes and dia- bolic agency. MRS. SHELLEY (1798-1851), the wife of the poet, and the daughter of W. Godwin, wrote in Italy, in 1816, the powerful tale of Frankenstein, in which a young student of physi- ology succeeds in constructing, out of the horrid remnants of the churchyard and dissecting-room, a kind of monster, to which he afterwards gives, apparently by the agency of galvanism, a kind of spectral and convulsive life. Some of the chief appear- ances of the monster, particularly the moment when he begins to move for the first time, and, towards the end of the book, among the eternal snows of the arctic circle, are managed with a striking and breathless effect, that makes us for a moment for* 286 ENGLISH LITEEATURE. CHAP. XXVI. get the childish improbability and melodramatic extravagance of the tale. 483. To this subdivision belong the works of that most easy and prolific writer, G. P. R. JAMES (1801-1862) the most in- dustrious, if not always most successful, imitator of Scott, in the revival of chivalric and Middle-Age scenes. The number of James's works is immense, but they bear among themselves a family likeness so strong, and even oppressive, that it is im- possible to consider this author otherwise than as an ingenious imitator and copyist first of Scott, and secondly of himself. He is particularly versed in the history of France, and some of his most successful novels have reference to that country, among which we may mention Richelieu. His great deficiency is want of real, direct, powerful human passion, and consequently of life and movement in his intrigues. 484. II. Our second subdivision the Novels of real life and society is so extensive that we. can but throw a rapid glance on its principal productions. To do this consistently with clear- ness, we must begin rather far back, with the novels of Miss Burney. FRANCES BURNEY (1752-1840) was the daughter of, Dr. Burney, author of the History of Music. While yet resid- ing at her father's house, she composed in her stolen moments of leisure the novel of Evelina, published in 1778, and is related not to have communicated to her father the secret of her having written it, until the astonishing success of the fiction rendered her avowal triumphant and almost necessary. Evelina was fol- lowed in 1782 by Cecilia, a novel of the same character. In 1786 Miss Burney received an appointment in the household of Queen Charlotte, where she remained till her marriage in 1793 with Count d'Arblay, a French refugee officer. She published after her marriage a novel entitled Camilla ; and her name has more recently come before the public by her Diary and Letters, which appeared in 1842, after her death. 485. Miss Burney was followed by a number of writers, chiefly women, among whom the names of Mrs. Charlotte Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Opie, are prominent. Their fictions, like those of Miss Edgeworth in more recent times, have a high and never-failing moral aim ; and these ladies have exhibited a power over the feelings, and an intensity of pathos, not much inferior to Richardson's in Clarissa Harloive. But their works are very unequal, and the pathos of which we speak is not diffused, but A. D. 1756-1836. WILLIAM GODWIN. 287 concentrated into particular moments of the action; and is ob- tained at the expense of great preparation and involution of circumstances. 486. At the head of the second division of our fictions is undoubtedly WILLIAM GODWIN (1756-1836), a man of truly powerful and original genius, who devoted his whole life to the propagation of certain social and political theories visionary, indeed, and totally impracticable, but marked with the impress of benevolence and philanthropy. He was in reality one of those hard-headed enthusiasts at once wild visionaries and severe logicians who abounded in the age of Marvel, Milton, and Harrington ; and his true epoch would have been the first period of Cromwell's public life. His own career, extending down to his death in 1836, was incessantly occupied with literary activ- ity : he produced an immense number of works, some immortal for the genius and originality they display, and all for an inten- sity and gravity of thought, for reading and erudition. The first work which brought him into notice was the Inquiry concerning- Political Justice (1793), a Utopian theory of morals and gov- ernment, by which virtue and benevolence were to be the pri- mum mobile of all human actions, and a philosophical republic was to take place of all our imperfect modes of polity. The first and finest of his fictions is Caleb Williams (1794). Its chief didactic aim is to show the misery and injustice arising from our present imperfect constitution of society, and the oppression of our imperfect laws, not merely those of the statute-book, but also those of social feeling and public opinion. Caleb Williams is an intelligent peasant-lad, taken into the service of Falkland, the true hero, an incarnation of honor, intellect, benevolence, and a passionate love of fame, who, however, in a moment of ungovernable passion, has committed a murder, for which he allows an innocent man to be executed. This circumstance, partly by accident, partly by his master's voluntary confession, Williams learns, and is in consequence pursued through the greater part of the tale by the unrelenting persecution of Falk- land, who is now led, by his frantic and unnatural devotion to fame, to annihilate, in Williams, the evidence of his guilt. The adventures of the unfortunate fugitive, his dreadful vicissitudes of poverty and distress, the steady, bloodhound, unrelaxing pur- suit, the escapes and disguises of the victim, like the agonized turnings and doublings of the hunted hare all this is depicted 288 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. with an incessant and never-surpassed power of breathless inter- est. At last Caleb is formally accused by Falkland of robbery, and naturally discloses before the tribunal the dreadful secret which has caused his long persecution, and Falkland dies of shame and a broken heart. The interest of this wonderful tale is indescribable; the various scenes are set before us with some- thing of the minute reality, the dry, grave simplicity of Defoe. 487. Of more modern novelists WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACK- ERAY (1811-1863) is unquestionably the greatest. He was born at Calcutta in 1811, and was educated at the Charterhouse, to which he makes loving reference in his Vanity Fair and The Neivcomcs, under the name of " Grey Friars." He afterwards went to Cambridge, which he left without taking his degree. His great desire at this time was to become an artist; and with a considerable fortune he started for the continent, where he studied for four or five years in France, Italy, and Germany. But though a master of the pencil, Thackeray was not destined to become a great artist. On returning to London he continued his art studies ; but the loss of his fortune compelled him to throw himself with all his powers into the field of literature. He was first known by his articles in Fraser, to which he con- tributed under the names of Michael Angelo Titmarsh and George Fitzboodle, Esq. Tales, criticism, and poetry appeared in great profusion ; and were illustrated by the author's own pencil. The chief of his contributions to Fraser was the tale of Barry Lyndon, The Adventures of an Irish Fortune- Hunter. This was full of humor and incident, but the reading public was not yet expecting a great future from this unknown writer. In 1841 Punch was commenced, to which Thackeray contributed the Snob Papers and Jcamcs^s Diary, and many other papers in prose and verse. In 1846 and the two following years appeared Vanity Fair, by many supposed to be the best of his works certainly the most original. The novel was not complete before its author took his place among the great wri- ters of English fiction. It seized all circles with astonishment. The author of satirical sketches and mirthful poems had shown himself to be a consummate satirist, and a great novelist. Van- ity Fair was followed by his other novels, of which we shall speak presently. 488. On the establishment of the Cornhill Magazine in 1860, Thackeray became editor, and whilst connected with it he con- A. D. 1811-1863. THACKERAY. 289 tributed his later stories, The Adventures of Philip, Lovell thz Widower, and a little monthly sketch, de omnibus rebus et qui- busdant aliis, though oftener de nihilo, called -the Roundabout Papers. He died suddenly in the house which he had built at Kensington on December 23, 1863. 489. Vanity Fair, the first of Thackeray's chief works, is called a "Novel without a Hero." It is possessed, however, of two heroines Rebecca Sharp, the impersonation of intellect with- out heart, and Amelia Sedley, who has heart without intellect; the first of which is without doubt the ablest creation of modern fiction. As a whole the book is full of quiet sarcasm and severe rebuke ; but a careful reading will perceive the kindly heart that is beating under the bitterest sentence and the most caustic irony. 490. Pendennis, published in 1849 anc * 1850, was the immedi- ate successor of Vanity Fair, and is the life of a Tom Jones of the present age. Literary life presents scope for description, and is well used in the history of Pen, who is a hero of no very great worth. As Vanity Fair gives .us Thackeray's knowledge of life in the present day, so Esmond, which appeared in 1854, exhibits his intimate acquaintance with the society of the reigns of the later Stuarts and earlier Georges. Like Vanity Fair, it is without plot, and gives in an autobiographical form the his- tory of Colonel Henry Esmond. The style of some hundred and fifty years ago is reproduced with marvellous fidelity. The story of Esmond is probably the best of Thackeray's writings. 491. The Virginians is the history of the grandsons of Es- mond, and though not published till 1857, we mention it next as related to Esmond in history. It consists of a series of well- described scenes and incidents in the reign of George II. In 1853 was ended the most popular and best liked of Thackeray's novels, The Nervcomes. "The leading theme or moral of the story is the misery occasioned by forced and ill-assorted mar- riages." The noble courtesy, the Christian gentlemanliness of Colonel Ne-ivcomc is perhaps a complete reflection of the author himself. Ethel Ne-wcome is Thackeray's favorite female charac- ter. The minor personages are most lifelike, while over the whole there is a clear exhibition of the real kindliness of heart which Thackeray possessed. 492. The two courses of lectures On the English Humorists and The Four Georges, are models of style and criticism. The 19 29G ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. latter is a clever sketch of the home and court life of the first Hanoverians. The lectures are full of thoughts sternly abhor- rent of the falsity and rottenness which these courts presented, while admiration for the goodness and kindness of the third George almost makes the lecturer forget his weaknesses. The Humorists is a more valuable work, containing some of the most complete criticism on those writers which is to be found in our language. 493. At the head of the very large class of female novelists who have adorned the more recent literature of England, we must place MARIA EDGEWORTH (about 1765-1849). Her long and useful life was chiefly passed in Ireland ; and many of her .earlier works were produced in partnership with her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a man of eccentric character and great intellectual activity, who devoted himself to experiments in education and social ameliorations. The most valuable series of Miss Edgeworth's educational stories were the charming tales .entitled Frank, Harry and Lucy, Rosamond, and others, com- bined under the general heading of Early Lessons. These are written in the simplest style and language, and are intelligible and intensely interesting even to very young readers; while the knowledge of character they display, the naturalness of their incidents, and the sound practical principles they inculcate, make them delightful even to the adult reader. In the Parents' Assist- ant the same qualities are applied to the moral and intellectual improvement of a more advanced age; and the common errors, weaknesses, and prejudices of boys and girls are combated in a series of stories which, in the good sense and observation they display, are as admirable as in their artistic construction. Some of these as, for example, Simple Susan are little master- pieces of style and execution. But perhaps the most truly origi- nal of Miss Edgeworth's stories is the inimitable Castle Rack- rent, giving the biographies, equally humorous and pathetic, of a series of Irish landlords. The follies and vices which have caused no small proportion of the social miseries that have afflicted Ireland are here shown up with a truly dramatic effect. In the novels of Patronage and the Absentee other social errors, either peculiar to that country or common to it with others, are powerfully delineated. Almost all these works show a delicate appreciation of the merits and the weaknesses of the Irish char- acter, and especially of the Irish peasantry; and Miss Edge- A. D. 1779-1817. JOHNGALT. MISS AUSTEN. 291 worth has in some sense done for her humbler countrymen what Scott did with such loving genius for the Scottish people. The services rendered by Maria Edgeworth to the cause of common sense are incalculable; and the singular absence of enthusiasm in her writings, whether religious, political, or social, only- makes us more wonder at the force, vivacity, and consistency with which she has drawn a large and varied gallery of char- acters. 4!)4. JOHN GALT (1779-1839), in a long series of novels, has confined himself to the minute delineation of the interior life of the Scottish peasantry and provincial tradespeople. The Annals of the Parish, the supposed journal of a quaint, simple- minded Presbyterian pastor, give us a singularly amusing in- sight into the microscopic details of Scottish life in the lower classes. Gait's primary characteristic is a dry, subdued, quaint humor a quality very perceptible in the lower orders of Scot- land, which in his works, as in the national cnaracter of his countrymen, is often accompanied by a very profound and true sense of the pathetic. The more romantic and tragical side of the national idiosyncrasy has been exquisitely portrayed in the touching tales of PROFESSOR JOHN WILSON (1785-1854), also celebrated as a poet and the author of Nodes Ambrosiance, of whom we shall speak more fully in the subsequent chapter. In his Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life, published in 1822, and in The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay, which appeared in 1823, he exhibits a deep feeling for the virtues and trials of humble life. (318) 495. But the department of fiction which undoubtedly pos- sesses not only the greatest degree of value for the English reader, but will have the most powerful attraction for foreign students of our literature, is that which depicts the. manners of the middle and lower classes of the English people. The first in point of time, and the first in point of merit, in this province is Miss AUSTEN (1775-1817), whose novels may be considered as models of perfection in a new and very difficult species of writing. She depends for her effect upon no surprising adven- tures, upon no artfully-involved plot, upon no scenes deeply pa- thetic or extravagantly humorous. She paints a society which, though virtuous, intelligent, and enviable above all others, pre- sents the fewest salient points of interest and singularity to the novelist: we mean the society of English country-gentlemen. 292 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. Whoever desires to know the interior life of that vast and ad- mirable body the rural gentry of England a body which abso- lutely exists in no other country on earth, and to which the nation owes many of its most valuable characteristics must read Miss Austen's novels, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. In these works the -reader will find very little variety and no picturesqueness of per- sons, little to inspire strong emotion, nothing to excite wonder or laughter; but he will find admirable good sense, exquisite discrimination, and an unrivalled power of easy and natural dialogue. 496. Among the almost countless host of female novelists that the insatiable appetite of these later times for this kind of read- ing has given birth to, the authoress of Jane Eyre is distin- guished by special force and originality, and by extraordinary .power in the conception and delineation of character. CHAR- LOTTE BRONTE (1816-1855) was the eldest of three rather re- markable sisters, daughters of the incumbent of Haworth in Yorkshire, and first appeared before the public in 1846, as joint contributor with her sisters to a volume of poems which failed to attract any attention. But her next work met with a very dif- ferent fate. In 1847 Jane Eyre was. published, and the reputa- tion of the author, who wrote under the name of Currer Bell, was fixed as one of the highest in this department of letters ; and this position it still retains. Shirley followed in the same style in 1849, anc ^ Villette in 1853 this last in some respects the greatest of her works. In 1854 she married her father's curate, Mr. Nicholls : but after a few months of happiness.which contrast strangely with the many troubles of her earlier days, died in the beginning of 1855. Her life has been written by Mrs. GASKELL, herself a novelist of great merit, lately dead, and is one of the saddest and most touching of narratives. 497. Of the purely comic manner of fiction there are few bet- ter examples than the novels of THEODORE HOOK (1788-1842). He is greatest in the description of London life, and particu- larly in the rich drollery with which he paints the vulgar efforts of suburban gentility to ape the manners of the great. There is not one of his numerous novels and shorter tales in which some scene could not be cited carrying this kind of drollery almost to the brink of farce. What, for example, can be more irresisti- .blc.than the Bloomsbury evening party in Maxwell, or the din- A. D. 1789-1855. TROLLOPE. BECKFORD. 293 ner at Mr. Abberley's in The Man of Many Friends ? Hook's more exclusively serious novels are generally considered as in- ferior to those in which there is a mixture of the ludicrous ; and for one of the last works produced by this clever writer before his death, he selected a subject admirably adapted to the pecu- liar strength of his talent. This was Jack Brag, a most spirited embodiment of the arts employed by a vulgar pretender to creep into aristocratic society, and the ultimate discomfiture of the absurd hero. Hook died in 1842, leaving a large number of works, all of them exhibiting strong proofs of humor, but mostly deprived of permanent value by the haste perceptible in their execution. The best of them are, perhaps, Gilbert Gur- ney, and its continuation, Gurney Married. 498. Very similiar to Theodore Hook in the subject and treat- ment of her novels, and not unlike him in the general tone of her talent, is MRS. TROLLOPE, whose happiest efforts are the exhibition of the gross arts and impudent stratagems employed by the pretenders to fashion. Her best work is, perhaps, The Widow Barnaby, in which she has reached the ideal of a charac- ter of gross, full-blown, palpable, complete pretension and vul- gar assurance. Mrs. Trollope's plots are exceedingly slight and ill-constructed, but her narrative is lively, and she par- ticularly excels in her characters of goodnatured, shrewd old maids. 499. It would be a great injustice were we not to devote a few words of admiration to the charming sketches of Miss MITFORD (1789-1855), a lady who has described the village life and scenery of England with the grace and delicacy of Goldsmith himself. Our Village is one of the most delightful books in the language ; it is full of those home scenes which form the most exquisite pe- culiarity, not only of the external nature, but also of the social life of the country. Miss Mitford describes with the truth and fidelity of Crabbe and Cowper, but without the moral gloom of the one, and the morbid sadness of the other. 500. III. ORIENTAL NOVELS. There exists in our literature a class of novels which have for their aim the delineation of the manners and scenery of distant countries ; and as among these works the Oriental are naturally the most splendid and promi- nent, we shall take three which seem the most favorable speci- mens of this subdivision. These are The History of the Caliph Vathek, by WILLIAM BECKFORD (1759-1844) ; the romance of 294 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. Anastasfus, by THOMAS HOPE (about 1770-1831) ; and the inim- itable Hajji Baba of JAMES MORIER (d. 1849). Vathek is an Arabian tale, and was originally published in 1784, in French*. being one of the rare instances of an Englishman being able to write that difficult language with the grace and purity of a native. Being afterwards translated by the author into his mother tongue, it forms one of the most extraordinary monu- ments of splendid imagery and caustic wit which literature can afford. It narrates the adventures of a haughty and effeminate monarch, led -on, by*the temptations of a malignant genie and the sophistries of a cruel and ambitious mother, to commit all sorts of crimes, to abjure his faith, and to offer allegiance to Eblis, the Mahomed an Satan, in the hope of seating himself on the throne of the Preadamite Sultans. In the concluding scene, which soars into the highest atmosphere of grand descriptive poetry, he descends into the subterranean palace of Eblis, where he does homage to the Evil One, and wanders for a while among the superhuman splendors of those regions of punishment. The fancy of genius has seldom conceived anything more terrible than the concluding portion of this strange work. 501. Hope's work, though very different in form from that of Beckford, was not unlike it in some points. Anastasius, pub- lished in 1819, purports to be the autobiography of a Greek, who, to escape the consequences of his own crimes and villanies of every kind, becomes a renegade, and passes through a long series of the most extraordinary and romantic vicissitudes. The hero is a compound of almost all the vices of his unfortunate and degraded nation; and in his vicissitudes of fortune we see passing before us, as in a diorama, the whole social, political, and religious life of Turkey and the Morea. The style is elabo- rate and passionate; and this, as well as the character of the principal personage, " Linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes," reminds us, in reading Anastasius, very strongly of the manner of Lord Byron. 502. But if the darker side of Oriental nature be presented to us in Vathek and Anastasius, the Hajji Baba of Morier will make us ample amends in drollery and a truly comic verve. This is the Gil Bias of Oriental life. Hajji Baba is a barber of Ispahan, who passes through a long but delightfully varied A. D. 1 792-1 848. CAPTAIN MARE YA T. 295 series of adventures, such as happen in the despotic and simple governments of the East, where the pipe-bearer of one day may become the vizier of the next. The hero is an easy, merry good- for-nothing, whose dexterity and gayety it is impossible not to admire, even while we rejoice in the punishment which his manifold rascalities draw down upon him ; and perhaps there is no work in the world which gives so vast, so lively, and so accurate a picture of every grade, every phase of Oriental ex- istence. 503. IV. NAVAL AND MILITARY NOVELS. It now remains only to speak of one species of prose fiction that which has for its subject the manners and personages of marine or military life. It may easily be conceived -that, the former service being most entwined with all the sympathies of the national heart, the subdivision of marine novels should be the richest. At the head of this class stands CAPTAIN MARRYAT (1792-1848), one of the most easy, lively, and truly humorous story-tellers we possess. One of the chief elements of his talent is undoubtedly the tone of high, effervescent, irrepressible animal spirits which character- izes everything he has written. He seems half-tipsy with the gayety of his heart, and never scruples to introduce the most grotesque extravagances of character, language, and event, pro- vided they are likely to excite a laugh. Nothing can surpass the liveliness and drollery of his Peter Simple, Jacob Faithful, or Mr. Midshipman Easy ; what an inexhaustible gallery of originals has he paraded before us ! Marryat's narratives are ex- ceedingly inartificial, and often grossly improbable ; but we read on with gay delight, never thinking of the story, but only solicit- ous to follow the droll adventures, and laugh at the still droller characters. This author has a peculiar talent for the delineation of boyish characters : his Faithful and Peter Simple (the " fool of the family ") not only amuse but interest us ; and in many pas- sages he has shown no mean mastery over the pathetic emotions. Though superficial in his view of character, he is generally faith- ful to reality, and shows an extensive if not very deep knowl- edge of what his old waterman calls " human natur." There are few authors more amusing than Marryat ; his books have the effervescence of champagne. 504 . The tales called Tom Cringle's Log and The Cruise of the Midge are also works in this kind (although not exclusively naval) of striking brilliancy and imaginative power. In these 296 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVI. we have a most gorgeously colored and faithful delineation of the luxuriant scenery of the West Indian Archipelago, and the manners of the Creole and colonist population are reproduced with consummate drollery and inexhaustible splendor of lan- guage. They were the production of MR. MICHAEL SCOTT (d. 1835), a gentleman engaged in commerce, and personally famil- iar with the scenes he described ; and the admiration they excited at their first appearance (anonymously) in Black-wood's Maga- zine cau'sed them to be ascribed to the pen of some of the most distinguished of living writers, particularly to that of PRO- FESSOR WILSON. 505. The military novels are mostly by living authors, and are therefore excluded from our work. A. D. 1800. NINETEENTH CENTURY. 297 CHAPTER XXVII. PROSE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 506. THE early years of the present century were years of conflict and excitement. The public mind was wrought to the highest pitch, now of fear, and now of triumph. England fought for the liberties of Europe ; at times the struggle seemed to be for her own existence. The literature of a people always reflects something of the prevalent tone of its age, and we may there- fore expect that the chief compositions of the first thirty years of this century will be marked by intense feeling, pa*ssion, and emotion. Accordingly there is no age in English history which can exhibit such an array of masters of song. The most pas- sionate states of the human mind demand an expression in song. In the "Victorian age," on the other hand, the prose element has predominated. The calmer inquiries into politics, philos- ophy, art, and physical science, have been prosecuted in the more tranquil period, and the first noticeable feature in the writers of the present century is the growing prevalence of our prose literature, more especially in the department of fiction. 507. Another feature of the present age is the growth of periodical literature. The rise of our leading reviews will be noticed presently, and together with these have sprung up the countless magazines and newspapers which form the chief part of most men's reading. The Book has become too laborious, too tedious a thing for the study of this overworked age. We have come to require stimulants in our reading. Everybody reads something, and few read much. 508. The chief external influence affecting the literature of the age has come from Germany. The thoughts and even style of this philosophical literature have done much to shape and regulate English thoughts and language. Coleridge introduced it largely, and he has been followed in the work by Thomas Carlyle. 509. In no department of literature has Europe made greater 298 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. progress during the present century than in that of History. A new impulse was given to the study of Ancient History by the publication of the first volume of Niebuhr's Roman History, in Germany, in 1811. This remarkable work taught scholars not only to estimate more accurately the value of the original au- thorities, but to enter more fully into the spirit of antiquity, and to think and feel as the Romans felt and thought. In the treat- ment of Modern History the advance has been equally striking. An historical sense, so to speak, has grown up. A writer of any period of modern history is now expected to produce in support as his facts the testimony of credible contemporary witnesses; while the public records of most of the great European nations, now rendered accessible to students, have imposed upon histori- ans a labor, and opened sources of information, quite unknown to Hume, Robertson, and the historical writers of the preceding century. 510. The most eminent English writers upon Ancient History are BISHOP THIRLWALL and GEORGE GROTE, both of whom have produced Histories of Greece far superior to any existing in other European languages, but who, as living writers, are excluded from the present work. DR. THOMAS ARNOLD (1795- 1842), Head-Master of Rugby School, wrote a History of Rome in three volumes (1838-40-42), which was broken off, by his death, at the end of the Second Punic War. This work is chiefly valuable as a popular exhibition of Niebuhr's views, and is written in clear and masculine English. Dr. Arnold also pub- lished some Introductory Lectures on Modern History (1842), which display more independence of thought. He was also the author of several theological works, which exercised great in- fluence upon his generation. The most formidable opponent of Niebuhr's views was SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL LEWIS (1806-1863), equally remarkable as a statesman and a scholar. His most im- portant historical work is An Inquiry into the Credibility of the early Roman History, published in 1855. While rejecting with Niebuhr the received narrative of early Roman history, Sir George Lewis attacks the defective method adopted by the Ger- man historian in attempting to reconstruct this portion of Roman history. He was also the author of many valuable political works, of which the mo^t important are. A Treatise on the Method of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, the Influence of Au- thority in Matters of Opinion, and the Use and Abuse of Political Terms. A. D. 1800-1859. MACAULAT. 299 511. The most illustrious recent writer of modern history is THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859), raised to the peer- age, in 1857, as Lord Macaulaj of Roth ley. {341, 34:2} He was the son of Zachary Macaulay. an ardent philanthropist, and one of the earliest opponents of the slave trade. Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which College he became a Fellow, and called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, he suddenly achieved a literary reputation by an article on Milton in the Edinburgh Review in 1825. This was the first of a long series of brilliant literary and historical essays which he contributed to the same periodical. His career as a statesman was both brilliant and successful, but it is as a man of letters that his name will be longest remembered. . 512. Macaulay is distinguished as a Poet, (3,25) an Essayist, and an Historian. His Lays of Ancient Rome are the best known of his poems ; but the lines which he wrote upon his defeat at Edinburgh in 1847 are the finest. His Essays and his History will, in virtue of their inimitable style, always give Macaulay a high place among English classics. His style has been well described by Dean Milman. " Its characteristics were vigor and animation, copiousness, clearness; above all, sound English, now a rare excellence. The vigor and life were una- bating; perhaps in that conscious strength which cost no exer- tion he did not always gauge and measure the force of his own words. . . . His copiousness had nothing tumid, diffuse, Asiatic; no ornament for the sake of ornament. As to its clearness, one may read a sentence of Macaulay twice to judge of its full force, never to comprehend its meaning. His English was pure, both in idiom and in words, pure to fastidiousness ; . . . every word must be genuine English, nothing that approached real vulgarity, nothing that had not the stamp of popular use, or the authority of sound English writers, nothing unfamiliar to the common ear." 513. Macaulay 's Essays are philosophical and historical dis- quisitions, embracing a vast range of subjects: but the larger number and the most important relate to English History. These Essays, however, were only preparatory to his great work on the History of England, which he had intended to write from the accession of James II. to the time immediately preceding the French Revolution. But of this subject he lived to complete only a portion. The two first volumes, published in 1849, con- tain the reign of James II. and the Revolution of 1688; two 300 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. more, which appeared in 1855, bring down the reign of William III. to the peace of Ryswick in 1697; while a fifth, published in 1861, after the author's death, nearly completes the history of that reign. 514:. The other great writer on modern history in the present century, superior in judgment to Macaulay, though inferior in graces of style, is HENRY HALLAM (1777-1859). (337) He was one of the early contributors to the Edinburgh Review, and his criticism in that Journal, in 1808, of Sir Walter Scott's edition of Dryden's works was marked by that power of discrimination and impartial judgment which characterized all his subsequent writings. 515. The result of his long-continued studies first appeared fully in his View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, published in 1818, and exhibiting, in a series of historical dis- sertations, a comprehensive survey of the chief circumstances that can interest a philosophical inquirer during the period usually denominated the Middle Ages. Mr. Hallam's next work was The Constittitional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. , published in 1827; and his third great production was An Introduction to the Lit- erature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, which appeared in 1837-39. Mr. Hallam's latter years were saddened by the loss of his two sons, the eldest of whom formed the subject of Tennyson's In Memoriam. 516. An estimate of Hallam's literary merits has been given by Macaulay, his illustrious contemporary, in a review of the Constitutional History: "Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has great industry and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive, various, and profound. His. mind is equally distinguished by the amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. . . . His work is eminently judicial. The whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exag- gerating nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alter- nately biting their lips to hear their conflicting misstatements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History the most impartial book that we have ever read." I A. D. 1791-1868. HENRY HART MILMAN. 301 517. The oft-repeated reproach once directed against the Eng- lish people that Gibbon was its only ecclesiastical historian has been entirely removed by HENRY HART MILMAN (1791-1868), Dean of St. Paul's, one of the best-balanced and most highly- cultivated intellects that England has ever produced. To By- ron, writing in 1821, he is merely " The poet-priest Milrnan, So ready to kill man ; " author of Fazio and Samor, and a somewhat trenchant reviewer in the " Quarterly." To us, however, he is something more an historian whose astonishing impartiality is perhaps not the greatest of his merits, an editor of Gibbon distinguished alike by the breadth and accuracy of his knowledge and by a high- toned liberality, and a classical scholar of singular taste and judgment. He held for many years the professorship of Poetry at Oxford, to which he was elected in 1821 ; and in addition to the above-mentioned works he published at different times The Martyr of Antioch, the Fall of Jerusalem, and other poems, all respectable in their way, but falling far short of supreme excel- lence. Fazio and the Fall of Jerusalem, both dramas, are per- haps the most meritorious. But it is upon his historical produc- tions that his fame rests. These have already taken their place among the English classics ; and it will be long before they are superseded. They consist of three great works, the History of the Jeivs, the History of Christianity, and last, though very far from least, the History of Latin Christianity, which appeared in 1829. 1840, and 1854, respectively. Certain indispensable quali- ties of the true historian Milman possessed in fuller perfection than any English writer that ever lived, the keenest critical sagacity, a rare faculty of sifting and determining the exact value of evidence, a mind singularly free from prejudice, and almost unerring in its power of penetrating to the truth, wher- ever truth were attainable. His knowledge was enormous; and he seems to move with the most perfect ease beneath the im- mense weight of his acquisitions, which never once interfered with his independence of thought. Few men have won a more honorable position in literature than Dean Milman ; he grappled with a subject which, more than any other tries the historical sinew ; extending over a vast period of time, embra- cing the widest area of human activity, and dealing with the subtilest.and most ..intricate of phenomena, it presents difficult * 302 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. ties which any but the boldest would naturally shrink from. It is the undying distinction of this great writer that on this subject he has produced a series of works likely to last as long as the language they are written in. His latest, which is indeed also a posthumous publication, the Annals of St. Pauls Cathedral, is interesting as showing that his magnificent powers remained undecayed until the end. 518. The theological and religious literature of this age is -marked by a less metaphysical character than that of former times. Works of a controversial kind have been fewer, while greater attention has been paid to exegetical studies. The prac- tical and homiletical works have been very numerous. The array of Sermons which the last sixty years have seen published is appalling, and if the good accomplished has been propor- tioned to the number of tracts and sermons issued, there must certainly have been an effect which should cheer the believer in human progress. Space forbids even a mention of the Societies whose special work is the publication of religious literature, of which many were founded in the present century, and all have received their greatest success in the present age. Many of the best-known religious writers have won their chief literary honr ors in the other fields of criticism, history, or philosophy, and will receive notice there. The three most distinguished the- ological writers are perhaps Hall, Foster, and Chalmers. 519. In Philosophy a large number of contributions to our literature has been made during the period under our considera- tion. Though pdVhaps there has been but little original specu- lation, and no great discovery in mental science, the investigation of metaphysical phenomena has been profound and accurate. The scope of this work forbids a notice of living writers ; other- wise we might refer to some names, such as JOHN STUART MILL, whose analyses and investigations, more especially in the sys- tems of inductive science, have had none to compare with them since the great work of Bacon; while in the more direct exami- nation of mental phenomena, the Scotch school has had some of its ablest members in the present era, and the materialist schools of different color have found their strongest advocates and expounders in writers, many of whom are still living. The iniluence of Germany has been felt in no department of our lit- erature so greatly as here. The followers of Reid owe no little to the writings of Kant, whilst the .idealists of England have bor- A. D. 1788-1863. HAMILTON. WIIATELY. 3C3 rowed no little of the truth they hold from the profound though the very obscure speculations of Hegel. The study of logic in England proper has been revived almost within our own memory, and the once neglected studies have emerged from their misappre- hension and obloquy, and are rapidly gaining in the universities their proper position abreast of classics and mathematics. 520. SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON (1788-1856), (339} the son of Dr. Hamilton, of Glasgow, was educated at Oxford, and called to the bar in 1813. He betfame Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh, in 1821, and in 1836 obtained the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics, which he occupied until his death. His chief works were essays in the Edinburgh Review, collected as Dis- cussions on Philosophy, &c. (1852), and An Edition of Reid, with' Dissertations. His Lectures have been published, since his death, under the editorship of Mr- Mansel and Mr. Veitch. Sir William Hamilton was without doubt the greatest philosopher of his age. He founded his system on consciousness, following Reid more than any other master, and guiding his speculations by Aristotle and Kant. His style is a model of philosophical writing. It is clear, capacious, and appropriate. It neither per- plexes by technicalities, nor misleads by figure and illustration. 521. ARCHBISHOP WHATELY (1787-1863), the son of Dr. Whately of Nonsuch Park, Surrey, was born in London, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. (34:6} Having entered the Church, he became Rector of Halesworth in 1822, Principal of St. Alban's Hall in 1825, then Professor of Political Economy, and in 1831 was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Dublin. His first publications were, in 1821, three sermons on the Christian s Duty with respect to the Government, followed by his Bampton Lectures ; and, in 1826 and 1828, by his Logic and Rhetoric. To enumerate all the publications of this diligent writer would not be possible in this sketch. The chief were his essays on New Testament Difficulties (1828), the Sabbath and Romanism, which were produced together two years later. His lectures on Politi- cal Economy appeared in 1831 ; and later he published other works on social and economical questions. 522. Whately had a mind of great logical power, with little imagination and fancy. His views of questions are often shal- low, but always practical. His style is luminous, easy, and well adorned with every-day illustrations. A moralist of much higher tone than Paley, which fact arose from^he general spirit of his 30-f ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. time, he is the best representative of Paley in the present age. He is, as Paley was, clear rather than profound, vigorous rather than subtile ; with little speculation he unites much practical sense. 523. A very important portion of modern literature embraces those subjects which have reference to physical science. Our forefathers were more satisfied with reasons than with facts. The aim of modern investigators is to discover what is hidden in nature, rather than, by a course of deductive reasoning from pre-established principles, to display what ought to be found in nature. The inductive method of Bacon has never been so care- fully applied and diligently followed as in the scientific researches of the nineteenth century; and the advance of physical science has therefore been more rapid than that of any other branch of human knowledge. The greatest writers on physical science are still alive; and many of them will deserve a place in English literature on account of the style of their writings, such as HER- SCHEL, LYELL, OWEN, and HUXLEY. 524. We now pass on to the most extensive of the prose writ- ings of the nineteenth century namely, those which are for the most part found scattered in magazines and serials, and which embrace the critical essays and other compositions on social, political, and moral subjects. The increased facilities of printing and a larger class of readers have combined to render the " periodicals " the great feature of the age. These range from the valuable quarterlies, through the various forms of magazine and review, down 'to the daily paper, the peculiar feature of the literature of the times. Some of the most valuable of our essays have been contributed to these magazines. Every shade of politics, every school of philosophy, every sect of religion, has its paper or its magazine. No feature is so striking in this class of writings as the real worth and ability displaced in many of the articles of the periodicals. To give a history of all these periodicals is of course impossible, but the Edinburgh and Quar- terly Reviews imparted such an impulse to literature as to de- mand a few words. 525. The Edinburgh Review was established in 1802 by a small party of young men, Brougham, (307, 368} Jeffrey, (333} Sydney Smith, Horner, obscure at that time, but am- bitious and enterprising, who were all destined to attain a high degree of distinction. It founded its claim to success upon the boldness and vivacity gf .its tone, its total rejection of all pre- A. D. 1773-1854. JEFFREY. LOCKHAET. 305 cedent and authority, and the audacity with which it discussed questions previously held to be "hedged in" with the "divin- ity" of prescription. It was conducted from 1802 to 1829 by FRANCIS JEFFREY (1773-1850), a Scotch advocate, who was sub- sequently raised to the bench. (333) He wrote a large number of critical articles, marked by good taste and discrimination, the most important of which were republished by him in a collected form in 1844. Another of the most impoitant of the early con- tributors to the Review, and who indeed edited the first number, was SYDNEY SMITH (1771-1845), an English clergyman, and in the later period of his life Canon of St. Paul's. (331, 332) He wrote chieflv upon political and practical questions with a richness of comic humor, and an irresistible dry sarcasm, which is not only exquisitely amusing, but is full of solid truth as well as pleasantry. 526. To counteract the danger of those liberal opinions which were fiercely advocated by the Edinburgh, the late Mr. Murray in 1809 started a new periodical, called The Quarterly Review, which was warmly welcomed by the friends of the Government, and immediately obtained a literary reputation at least equal to that of the earlier periodical. The editorship of it was intrusted to WILLIAM GIFFORD (1757-1826), the translator of Juvenal (1802), and the author of the Baviad (1794) and Mceviad (1795), t\vo of the most bitter, powerful, and resistless literary satires which modern days have produced. Gifford was a self-taught man, who had raised himself, by dint of almost superhuman exertions and admirable integrity, to a high place among the literary men of his age. 527. Gifford was succeeded in the editorship of the Quarterly, after a short interregnum, by JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART (1794- r 854)j (310) a man of undoubted genius, the author of several novels, which have been already mentioned, and one of the earli- est and ablest contributors to Black-food's Magazine. Many of the best articles in the Quarterly were written by himself; and those which combine the biography and criticism of distinguished authors are unsurpassed by anything of the kind in the English language. In 1820 he married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott, and in 1837-39 ne published the charming Life of his fa- ther-in-law. In biography he was unrivalled; and his Life of Napoleon, which appeared without his name, is far superior to many more ambitious performances. 20 306 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. 528. Blackivood.^ Magazine first appeared in 1817, and was distinguished by the ability of its purely literary articles, as well as by the violence of its political sentiments. Among the many able men who wrote for it, one of the most eminent was JOHN WILSON (1785-1854), born in Paisley, May 18, 1785, the son of a wealthy merchant. After studying at Oxford, he took up his abode on the banks of the Windermere, attracted thither by the society of Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. Wilson was an ardent admirer of Wordsworth, whose style he adopted, to some extent, in his own poems, the Isle of Palms (1812), and The City after the Plague (1816). The year before the publication of the latter poem Wilson had been compelled, by the loss of his fortune, to remove to Edinburgh, and to adopt literature as a pro- fession. Though Mr. Blackwood was the editor of his own mag- azine, Wilson was the presiding spirit, and under the name of Christopher North and other pseudonymes he poured forth article after article with exuberant fertility. His Nodes Ambrosiance, in which politics, literary criticism, and fun were intermingled, enjoyed extraordinary popularity. In 1820 he was elected Pro- fessor, of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. 529. It would be impossible in our limits to give an account of the many other writers who distinguished themselves by their contributions to the Reviews and Magazines : but in addition to those already mentioned two essayists stand forth pre-eminent Charles Lamb and Thomas De Quincey. 530. CHARLES LAMB (1775-1834) (334:, 335} was born in the Temple, where his father was clerk to one of the Benchers, and was educated at Christ's Hospital. He was essentially a Londoner : London life supplied him with his richest materials ; and yet his mind was so imbued, so saturated with our older writers, that he is original by the mere force of self-transforma- tion into the spirit of the older literature ; he was, in short, an old writer, who lived by accident a century or two after his real time. During the early and greater part of his life, Lamb, poor and unfriended, was drudging as a clerk in the India House; and it was not until late in life that he was unchained from the desk. In his earliest compositions, such as the drama of John Woodvil, and subsequently in the Essays of Elia, although the world at first perceived a mere imitation of the quaintness of expression of the old writers, there was in reality a revival of their very spirit. The Essays of Elia, contributed by him at A. D. 1775-1859. LAMB. DEQUINCET. 307 different times to the London Magazine, are the finest thing's for humor, taste, penetration, and vivacity, which have ap- peared since the days of Montaigne. Where shall we find such intense delicacy of feeling, such unimaginable happiness of expression, such a searching into the very body of truth, as in these unpretending compositions? The style has a peculiar and most subtle charm ; not the result of labor, for it is found in as great perfection in his familiar letters a certain quaint- ness and antiquity, not affected in Lamb, but the natural garb of his thoughts. As in all the true humorists, his pleasantry was inseparably allied with the finest pathos ; the merry quip on the tongue was but the commentary on the tear which trembled in the eye. The inspiration that other poets find in the moun- tains, in the forest, in the sea, Lamb could draw from the crowd of Fleet-street, from the remembrances of an old actor, from the benchers of the Temple. 531. Lamb was the schoolfellow, the devoted admirer and friend of Coleridge; and perhaps there never was an individual so loved by all his contemporaries, by men of every opinion, of every shade of literary, political, and religious sentiment, as this great wit and amiable man. His Specimens of the Old English Dramatists showed what treasures of the richest poetry lay con- cealed in the unpublished, and in modern times unknown, wri- ters of that wonderful age, whose fame had been eclipsed by the glory of some two or three names of the same period. Indeed, Lamb's mind, in its sensitiveness, in its mixture of wit and pathos, was eminently Shakspearian ; and his intense and rev- erent study of the works of Shakspeare doubtless gave a ten- dency to this : the glow of his humor was too pure and steady not to have been reflected from the sun. In his poems, as, for instance, the Fare-well to Tobacco, the Old Familiar Faces, and his few but beautiful sonnets, we find the very essence and spirit of this quaint tenderness of fancy, the simplicity of the child mingled with the learning of the scholar. 532. One of the greatest masters of English prose in the present century is THOMAS DE QUINCEY (1785-1859). He was born of wealthy parents near Manchester; and after leaving Oxford he settled at Grasmere, but resided during the latter part of his life at Glasgow and Edinburgh. 533. The best known of De Quincey's writings is the Confes- sions of an English Opium-Eater, published in 1821, {320, 330) 808 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAP. XXVII. in which the language frequently soars to astonishing heights of eloquence. Of his historical essays and narratives, the finest is his Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars, which is equal, in many passages, to the English Opium-Eater. Some of his essays are almost exclusively humorous, among which Mulder considered as one of the Fine Arts is the best known. An able critic thus sums up De Quincey's literary merits : "A great master of English composition ; a critic of uncommon delicacy ; an honest and unflinching investigator of received opinions; a philosophic inquirer, second only to his first and sole hero (Coleridge), De Quincey has left no successor to his rank. The exquisite finish of his style, with the scholastic rigor of his logic, form a com- bination which centuries may never reproduce, but which every generation should study as one of the marvels of English literature." 534. One of the studies peculiar to the present century has been that of political economy. RICARDO, SENIOR, MACULLOCH, and MILL, are writers whose place in a history of literature would perhaps be small, but whose influence on politics and commerce have been so great, that it would be a serious omis- sion not to call the attention of the student to their works. The most important writer upon ethics, jurisprudence, and political economy, is undoubtedly JEREMY BENTHAM (1748-1832). He was the son of a solicitor in London, was educated at Oxford, and called to the bar, but did not pursue it as a profession. For half a century Bentham was the centre of a small but influential circle of philosophical writers, and was the founder of what is called the Utilitarian school. It is, however, on his writings on jurisprudence that his fame chiefly rests ; and almost all the improvements in English law that have since been carried into effect may be traced, either directly or indirectly, to his exer- tions. (344, 345) LIST OF POETS LAUREATE. Edmund Spenser 1591-1599 Samuel Daniel 1599-1619 Ben Jonson 1619-1637 (Interregnum) William Davenant, Knight .... 1660-1668 *John Dryden 1670-1689 Thomas Shadwell 1689-1692 Nahum Tate 1692-1715 Nicholas Rowe 1715-1718 f Lawrence Eusden, Clerk ..... 1718-1730 Colley Gibber I 73~ 1 757 William Whitehead 1757-1785 Thomas Warton, Clerk 1785-1790 J Henry James Pye 1790-1813 Robert Southey 1813-1843 William Wordsworth 1843-1850 Alfred Tennyson 1850- * Though Dryden did not receive his letters-patent until the year 1670, he nevertheless was paid the salary for the two preceding years. t For Eusden see ' Dunciad,' book i. line 63; and for Colley Cibber, see same work paxsim. $ " Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye," says Lord Byron, in his ' Hints from Hor- ace.' And again in the ' Vision of Judgment,' the game poet represents the ghost oi King George" as exclaiming, on hearing Southey 's recitation of his ' Vision ' "What, what! Pye come again? no more no more of that! " It is by these notices alone that poor Pye still hangs on the human memory. (309) SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. NOTE. A volume of Choice Specimens of American Literature is now in preparation, and ref- erences to it will be inserted throughout this sketch as soon as the book is issued. CHAPTER I. Literature in the Colonies imitative. Relation of American to English Literature. Gradual Advancement of the United States in Letters. Their first Development theological. Writers in this Department. JONATHAN EDWARDS. Religious Controversy. WILLIAM E. CHANNING. Writings of the Clergy. Newspapers and School Books. Domestic Literature. Female Writers. Oratory. Revolu- tionary Eloquence. American Orators. ALEXANDER HAMILTON. DANIEL WEB- STER and others. EDWARD EVERETT. American History and Historians. JARED SPARKS. DAVID RAMSAY. GEORGE BANCROFT. HILDRETH. ELIOT. LOSSING. WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT. IRVING. WHEATON. COOPER. PARKMAN. 535. LITERATURE is a positive element of civilized life; but in different countries and epochs it exists sometimes as a pas- sive taste or means of culture, and at others as a development of productive tendencies. The first is the usual form in colo- nial societies, where the habit of looking to the fatherland for intellectual nutriment as well as political authority is the nat- ural result even of patriotic feeling. In academic culture, habit- ual reading, moral and domestic tastes, and cast of mind, the Americans were identified with the mother country, and, in all essential particulars, would naturally follow the style thus inhe- rent in their natures and confirmed by habit and study. At first, therefore, the literary development of the United States was imitative; but with the progress of the country, and her in- creased leisure and means of education, the writings of the peo- ple became more and more characteristic; theological and polit- ical occasions gradually ceased to be the exclusive moulds of (311) 312 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. thought; and didactic, romantic, and picturesque compositions appeared from time to time. Irving peopled " Sleepy Hollow" with fanciful creations ; Bryant described not only with truth and grace, but with devotional sentiment, the characteristic scenes of his native land; Cooper introduced Europeans to the wonders of her forest and sea-coast; Bancroft made her story eloquent; and Webster proved that the race of orators who once roused her children to freedom was not extinct. The names of Edwards and Franklin were echoed abroad ; the bonds of mental depen- dence were gradually loosened ; the inherited tastes remained, but they were freshened with a more native zest; and although Brockden Brown is still compared to Godwin, Irving to Addison, Cooper to Scott, Hoffman to Moore, Emerson to Carlyle, and Holmes to Pope, a characteristic vein, an individuality of thought, and a local significance are now generally recognized in the ema- nations of the American mind; and the best of them rank fa- vorably and harmoniously with similar exemplars in British literature ; while, in a few instances, the nationality is so marked, and so sanctioned by true genius, as to challenge the recogni- tion of all impartial and able critics. 536. The intellect of the country first developed in a theologi- cal form. This was a natural consequence of emigration, in- duced by difference of religious opinion, the free scope which the new colonies afforded for discussion, and the variety of creeds represented by the different races who thus met on a common soil, including every diversity of sentiment, from Puritanism to Episcopacy, each extreme modified by shades of doctrine and individual speculation. The clergy, also, were the best educated and most influential class : in political and social as well as religious affairs, their voice had a controlling power; and, for a considerable period, they alone enjoyed that frequent immu- nity from physical labor which is requisite to mental productive- ness. The colonial era, therefore, boasted only a theological literature, for the most part fugitive and controversial, yet sometimes taking a more permanent shape, as in the Biblical Concordance of Newman, and some of the writings of Roger Williams, Increase and Cotton Mather, Mayhew, Cooper, Stiles, Dwight, Elliot, Johnson, Chauncey, Witherspoon, and Hopkins. There is no want of learning or reasoning power in many of the tracts of those once formidable disputants; and such reading accorded with the stern tastes of our ancestors ; but, as a gen- CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 313 eral rule, the specimens which yet remain in print are now only referred to by the curious student of divinity or the antiquarian. The celebrated Treatise on the Will, by Dr. Edwards, an endur- ing relic of this epoch, survives, and, in its sagacious hardihood of thought, forms a characteristic introduction to the literary history of New England. . 537. Jonathan Edwards (Specimens of American , Litera- ture ) was the only son of a Connecticut minister of good ac- quirements and sincere piety. He was born in 1703, in the town of Windsor; he entered Yale College at the age of thirteen, and at nineteen became a settled preacher in New York. In 1723 he was elected a tutor in the college at New Haven; and after discharging its duties with eminent success for two years, he became the colleague of his grandfather, in the ministry, at the beautiful village of Northampton, in Massachusetts. Re- lieved from all material cares by the affection of his wife, his time was entirely given to professional occupations and study. An ancient elm is yet designated in the town where he passed so many years, in the crotch of which was his favorite seat, where he was accustomed to read and think for hours together. His sermons began to attract attention, and several were repub- lished in England. As a writer, he first gained celebrity by a treatise on Original Sin. He was inaugurated President of Princeton College, N. J., on the i6th of February, 1757; and on the 22d of the ensuing March died of smallpox, which then ravaged the vicinity. 538. " This remarkable man," says Sir James Mackintosh, " the metaphysician of America, was formed among the Calvin- ists of New England, when their stern doctrine retained its vigorous authority. His power of subtile argument, perhaps un- matched, certainly unsurpassed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient mystics, with a character which raised his piety to fervor. He embraced their doctrine, probably without knowing it to be theirs. Had he suffered this noble principle to take the right road to all its fair consequences, he would have entirely concurred with Plato, with Shaftesbury and Male- branche, in devotion to ' the first good, first perfect, and first fair.' But he thought it necessary afterwards to limit his doc- trine to his own persuasion, by denying that such moral ex- cellence could be discovered in divine things by those Chris- 314 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. tians who did not take the same view with him of their religion." * 539. Although so meagre a result, as far as regards permanent literature, sprang from the early theological writings in America, they had a certain strength and earnestness which tended to invigorate and exercise the minds of the people ; sometimes, indeed, conducive to bigotry, but often inciting reflective habits. The mental life of the colonists seemed, for a long time, iden- tical with religious discussion ; and the names of Anne Hutch- inson, Roger Williams, George Fox, Whitefield, the early field-preacher, and subsequently those of Dr. Hopkins, and Murray, the father of Universalism in America, were rallying words for logical warfare ; the struggle between the advocates of Quakerism, baptism by immersion, and others of the minority against those of the old Presbyterian and Church of England doctrine, gave birth to a multitude of tracts, sermons, and oral debates which elicited no little acumen, rhetoric, and learning. The originality and productiveness of the American mind in this department have, indeed, always been characteristic features in its development. Scholars and orators of distinguished ability have never been wanting to the clerical profession among us ; and every sect in the land has its illustrious interpreters, who have bequeathed, or still contribute, written memorials of their ability. Davies, Bellamy, Robinson, Stuart, Tappan, Williams, Bishop White, Dr. Jarvis, Dr. Hawks, Hooker, Cheever, and others, have materially adorned the literature of the church; the diversity of sects is one of the most curious and striking facts in our social history, and is fully illustrated by the literary organs of each denomination, from the spiritual com- mentaries of Bush to the ardent Catholicism of Brownson.f ( ) About the commencement of the present century, a memorable conflict took place between the liberal and orthodox party; and among the writings of the former may be found more finished specimens of composition than had previously appeared on ethics and religion. Independent of their opinions, the high * Progress of Ethical Philosophy. t The clergy have been among the prominent laborers in the field of useful literature. Tho names of Denim, Payson, Potter, Abbott, Beddl, Kuox, Todd, Woods, Spraguc, Baird, Barnes, Alexander, Tyng, Bacon, Stuart, Bushnell, Beecher, Coxe, Croswell, Hudson, Slielton, Spencer, of the Orthodox and the Episcopal denominations, and of Buckminster, William and Henry Ware, Dewey, Whitman, Osgood, Greenwood, Frothingham, Brooks, Furness, Hedge, Clarke, Hale, W. II. Channing, Pcabody, Stetson, and many others of the Unitarian, are identified with current educational and religious literature. CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 315 morality and beautiful sentiment, as well as chaste and graceful diction, of the leaders of that school, gave a literary value and interest to pulpit eloquence which soon exercised a marked in- fluence on the literary taste of the community. Religious and moral writings now derived from style a new interest. At the head of this class, who achieved a world-wide reputation for genius in ethical literature, is William Ellery Channing. ( ) 540. " Half a century ago, there might have been seen, thread- ing the streets of Richmond, Va., a diminutive figure, with a pale, attenuated face, eyes of spiritual brightness, an expansive and calm brow, and movements of nervous alacrity. The youth was one of those children of New England, braced by her dis- cipline, and early sent forth to earn a position in the world by force of character and activity of intellect. The teachings of Harvard had yielded him the requisite attainments to discharge the office of private tutor in a wealthy Virginian family. There, far from the companions of his studies and the home of his childhood, through secret conflicts, devoted application to books and meditation, amid privations, comparative isolation, and premature responsibility, he resolved to consecrate himself to the Christian ministry. Thence he went to Boston, and for more than forty years pursued the consistent tenor of his way as an eloquent divine and powerful writer, achieving a wide renown, bequeathing a venerated memory, and a series of dis- courses, reviews, and essays, which, with remarkable perspicu- ity and earnestness, vindicate the cause of freedom, the original endowments and eternal destiny of human nature, the sanctions of religion, and ' the ways of God to man.' He died, one beau- tiful October evening, at Bennington, Vermont, while on a sum- mer excursion, and was buried at Mount Auburn. A monument commemorates the gratitude of his parishioners and the exalted estimation he had acquired in the world. A biography pre- pared by his nephew recounts the few incidents of his career, and gracefully unfolds the process of his growth and mental history. 541. " It is seldom that ethical writings interest the multitude. The abstract nature of the topics they discuss, and the formal style in which they are usually embodied, are equally destitute of that popular charm that wins the common heart. A remark- able exception is presented in the literary remains of Channing. The simple yet comprehensive ideas upon which he dwells, the 816 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. tranquil gravity of his utterance, and the winning clearness of his style, render many of his productions universally attractive as examples of quiet and persuasive eloquence. And this icsult is entirely independent of any sympathy with his theological opinions, or experience of his pulpit oratory. Indeed, the genu- ine interest of Dr. Channing's writings is ethical. As the cham- pion of a sect, his labors have but a temporary value ; as the exponent of a doctrinal system, he will not long be remembered with gratitude, because the world is daily better appreciating the religious sentiment as of infinitely more value than any dogma; but as a moral essayist, some of the more finished writings of Channing will have a permanent hold upon reflective and taste- ful minds." 542. Of all the foreign commentators on our political insti- tutions and national character, De Tocqueville is the most dis- tinguished for philosophical insight; and although many of his speculations are visionary, not a few are pregnant with reflective wisdom. He says in regard to the literary development of such a republic as our own, that its early fruits " will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of thought, frequently of great variety and singular fecundity." What may be termed the casual writ- ing and speaking of the country, confirms this prophecy. The two most prolific branches of literature in America are joiu- nalism and educational works. The aim in both is to supply that immediate demand which, according to the French philos- opher, is more imperative and prevailing than in monarchical lands. Newspapers and school-books are, therefore, the char- acteristic form of literature in the United States. The greatest scholars of the country have not deemed the production of the latter an unworthy labor, nor the most active, enterprising, and ambitious failed to exercise their best powers in the former sphere. An intelligent foreigner, therefore, who observed the predomi- nence of these two departments, would arrive at the just conclu- sion, that the great mental distinction of the nation is twofold the universality of education and a general, though superficial in- tellectual activity in the mass of the people. There is, however, still another phase of our literary condition equally significant; and that is the popularity of what may be termed domestic read- ing a species of books intended for the family, and designed to teach science, religion, morality, the love of nature, and other desirable acquisitions. These works range from a juvenile to a CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 317 mature scope and interest, both in form and spirit, but are equally free of all extravagance, except it be purely imagi- native, and are unexceptionable, often elevated, in moral tone. They constitute the literature of' the fireside, and give to the young their primary ideas of the world and of life. Hence their moral importance can scarcely be overrated. Accordingly, children's books have not been thought unworthy the care of the best minds; philosophers like Guizot, poets like Hans Andersen, popular novelists like Scott and Dickens, have not scorned this apparently humble but most influential service. The reform in books for the young was commenced in England by Maria Edge- worth and Mrs. Barbauld, when the Parents' Assistant and Original Poems for Infant Minds superseded Mother Goose and Jack the Giant-Killer ; and with the instinct of domestic util- ity so prevalent on this side of the Atlantic, this impulse was caught up and prolonged here, and resulted in a class of books and writers, not marked by high genius o*r striking originality, yet honorable to the good sense and moral feeling of the coun- try. These have supplied the countless homes scattered over the western continent with innocent, instructive, and often re- fined reading, sometimes instinct not only with a domestic but a national spirit; often abounding with the most fresh and true pictures of scenery, customs, and local traits, and usually con- ceived in a tone of gentleness and purity fitted to chasten and improve the taste. These writers have usually adapted them- selves equally to the youngest and to the most advanced of the family circle extended their labor of love from the child's story-book to the domestic novel.* 543. Oratory is eminently the literature of republics. Political freedom gives both occasion and impulse to thought on public interests ; and -its expression is a requisite accomplishment to every intelligent and patriotic citizen. American eloquence, although not unknown in the professional spheres of colonial * It is creditable to the sex that this sphere has been filled, in our country, chiefly by female writers, the list of whom includes a long array of endeared and honored names, at the head of which stands Hannah Adams, with her once popular histories, Catharine M. Scdgwick, with her moral and graphic illustrations of New England life, and Lydia M. Child, with her poetic and generous suggestiveness. Among others may be mentioned Mrs. L3*dia H. Sigourney, Miss Leslie, sister of the artist, Eliza Robbins, Mrs. Gilman, of Charleston, S. C., Mrs. Lee, of Bos- ton, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, Miss Beecher, Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Ellett, Mrs. Stowe, Miss Prescott, Miss Coles, Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. S. J. Hale, and such noms de plume as Fanny Forrester, Grace Greenwood, and Gail Hamilton ; also Mrs. Embury, of Brooklyn, L. I., Miss Mclutosk, Mrs. Keal, Alice Carey, Mrs. Farrar, Mrs. Willard, Mrs. Hall, aiid Mies WetherelL 318 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. life, developed with originality and richness at the epoch of the revolution. Indeed, the questions that agitated the country nat- urally induced popular discussions, and as a sense of wrong and a resolve to maintain the rights of freemen took the place of remonstrance and argument, a race of orators seems to have sprung to life, whose chief traits continue evident in a long and illustrious roll of names, identified with our statesmen, legisla- tors, and divines. From the stripling Hamilton, who, in July, 1774, held a vast concourse in breathless excitement, in the fields near New York, while he demonstrated the right and necessity of resistance to British oppression, to the mature Web- ster, who, in December, 1829, defended the union of the states with an argumentative and rhetorical power ever memorable in the annals of legislation, there has been a series of remarkable public speakers who have nobly illustrated this branch of liter- ture in the United States. The fame of American eloquence is in part traditionary. 'Warren, Adams, and Otis in Boston, and Patrick Henry in Virginia, by their spirit-stirring appeals, roused the land to the assertion and defence of its just rights; and Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, Pinckney, Jay, Rut- ledge, and other firm and gifted men gave wise and effective direction to the power thus evoked, by their logical and earnest appeals. 544. Foremost among these remarkable men was Alexander Hamilton ; ( ) by birth a West Indian, by descent uniting the Scotch vigor and sagacity of character with the accomplish- ment of the French. While a collegian in New York, his talents, at once versatile and brilliant, were apparent in the insight and poetry of his debates, the solemn beauty of his devotion, the serious argument of his ambitious labors, and the readiness of his humorous sallies; with genuine religious sentiment, born perhaps of his Huguenot blood, he united a zest for pleasure, a mercurial temperament, and grave aspirations. In his first youth the gentleman, the pietist, the hero, and the statesman alternately exhibited, sometimes dazzled, at others impressed, and always won the hearts of his comrades. His first public demonstration was as an orator, when but seventeen ; and not- withstanding his slender figure and extreme youth, he took captive both the reason and feeling of a popular assembly. Shortly after he became involved in the controversy then raging between Whigs and Tories ; and his pamphlets and newspaper CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 319 essavs were read with mingled admiration and incredulity at the rare powers of expression and mature judgment thus displayed by the juvenile antagonist of bishops and statesmen. 545. The idol of the Federal party, and a candidate for the chief magistracy, he became entangled in a duel planned by political animosity, and fell at Weehawken, opposite the city of New York, by the hand of Aaron Burr, on the nth of July, 1804. The impression caused by his untimely death was unpre- cedented in this country; for no public man ever stood forth ' ; so clear in his great office," more essentially useful in affairs, courageous in battle, loyal in attachment, gifted in mind, or graceful in manner. During a life of varied and absorbing occupation, he found time to put on record his principles as a statesman : not always highly finished, his writings are full of sense and energy; their tone is noble, their insight often deep, and the wisdom they display remarkable. His letters are finely characteristic, his state papers valuable, and the Federalist a significant illustration both of his genius and the age. 5-iG. The historical and literary anniversaries of such frequent occurrence in this country, and the exigencies of political life, give occasion for the exercise of oratory to educated citizens of all professions from the statesman who fills the gaze of the world, to the village pastor and country advocate. Accordingly, a large, and, on the whole, remarkably creditable body of dis- courses, emanating from the best minds of the country, have been published in collected editions, to such an extent as to con- stitute a decided feature of American literature. They are characteristic also as indicating the popular shape into which intellectual labors naturally run in a young and free country, and the fugitive and occasional literary efforts which alone are practicable for the majority even of scholars. The most solid of this class of writings are the productions of statesmen ; and of these, three are conspicuous, although singularly diverse both in style and cast of thought Webster, Calhoun, and Clay. The former's oration at Plymouth in 1820; his address at the laying of the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument, half a century after the battle; his discourse on the deaths of Adams and Jefferson, the following year; and his reply to Hayne, in the U. S. Senate, in 1829, are memorable specimens of oratory, and recognized everywhere as among the greatest instances of genius in this branch of letters in modern times. These are, 320 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. however, but a very small part of his speeches and forensic arguments, which constitute a permanent and characteristic, as well as intrinsically valuable and interesting portion of our native literatitre. 547. Daniel Webster was the son of a New Hampshire farm- er. ( ) He was born in 1782, graduated at Dartmouth Col- lege, and began the practice of law at a village near Salisbury, his birthplace, but removed to Portsmouth in 1807. He soon distinguished himself at the bar, and as a member of the House of Representatives ; retired from Congress and removed to Boston in 1817; and by his able arguments in the Supreme Court, as well as his unrivalled eloquence on special occasions, was very soon acknowledged to be one of the greatest men America had produced. His career as a senator, a foreign minister, and secretary of state, was no less illustrious than his profes- sional triumphs; but, as far as literature is concerned, he will be remembered by his state papers and speeches. His style is remarkable for great clearness of statement. It is singularly emphatic. Clearness of statement, vigor of reasoning, and a faculty of making a question plain to the understanding by the mere terms in which it is presented, are the traits which uniformly distinguish his writings, evident alike in a diplomatic note, a legislative debate, and an historical discourse. His dig- nity of expression, breadth of view, and force of thought, realize the ideal of a republican statesman, in regard, at least, to natural endowments ; and his presence and manner, in the prime of his life, were analogous. 548. In the speeches of Clay there is a chivalric freshness which readily explains his great popularity as a man ; not so profound as Webster, he is far more rhetorical and equally patriotic. Calhoun was eminently sophistical, but his mind had that precise energy which is so. effectual in debate; his style of argument is concise ; and in personal aspect he was quite as remarkable the incarnation of intense purpose and keen per-- ception. These and many other eminent men have admirably illustrated that department of oratory which belongs to states- men. 549. Fisher Ames, William Wirt, John Quincy Adams, Hugh S. Legare, and others, famed as debaters, have united to this distinction the renown of able rhetoricians on literary and his- torical occasions ; and to these we may add the names of Ver- CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 321 planck, Chief Justice Story, Chancellor Kent, Rufus Choate, Randolph, Winthrop, Burgess, Preston, Benton, Prentiss, Be- thune, Bushnell, Dewey. Birney, Hillhouse, Sprague, Wayland, A. H. Everett, Horace Binney, Dr. Francis, Sumner, Whipple, Hillard, and other authors of occasional addresses, having, by their scope of thought v or beauty of style, a permanent literary value. The most voluminous writer in this department, how- ever, is Edward, Everett. ( ) His volumes not only exhibit the finest specimens of rhetorical writing, but they truly represent the cultivated American mind in literature. Edward Everett's Orations are as pure in style, as able in statement, and as au- thentic as expressions of popular history, feeling, and opinion in a finished and elegant shape, as were those of Demosthenes and Cicero in their day. Let not the frequency of public ad- dresses, and the ephemeral character they so often possess, blind our countrymen to the permanent and intrinsic merits of these Orations. They embody the results of long and faithful re- search into the most important facts of our history; they give "a local habitation and a name" to the most patriotic associa- tions ; their subjects, not less than their sentiments, are thor- oughly national ; not a page but glows with the most intelligent love of country, nor a figure, description, or appeal but what bears evidence of scholarship, taste, and just sentiment. The great battles of the revolution, the sufferings and principles of the early colonists, the characters of our leading statesmen, the progress of arts, sciences, and education among us all those great interests which are characteristic, to the philosopher, of a nation's life are here expounded, now by important facts, now by eloquent illustrations, and again in the form of impressive and graceful comments. History, essays, descriptive sketches, biographical data, picturesque detail, and general principles, are all blent_together with a tact, a distinctness, a felicity of ex- pression, and a unity of style unexampled in this species of writing. The old should grow familiar with their pages to keep alive the glow of enlightened patriotism ; and the young to learn a wise love of country and the graces of refined scholar- ship. 550. There is no branch of literature that can be cultivated in a republic with more advantage to the reader, and satisfaction to the author, than History. Untrammelled by proscription, and unawed by political authority, the annalist may trace the events 21 322 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. of the past, and connect them, by philosophical analogy, with the tendencies of the present, free to impart '.he glow of honest conviction to his record, to analyze the conduct of leaders, the tiieory of parties, and the significance of events. The facts, too, of our history are comparatively recent. It is not requisite to conjure up fabulous traditions or explore the dim regions of antiquity. From her origin the nation was civilized. A back- ward glance at the state of Europe, the causes of emigration, and the standard of political and social advancement at the epoch of the first colonies in North America, is all that w need to start intelligently upon the track of our country's marvellous growth, and brief, though eventful career. There are relations, however, both to the past and future, which render American history the most suggestive episode in the annals of the world, and give it a universal as well as special dignity. To those who chiefly value facts as illustrative of principles, and see in the course of events the grand problem of humanity, the occur- rences in the New World, from its discovery to the present hour, offer a comprehensive interest unrecognized by those who only regard details. Justly interpreted, the liberty and progress of mankind, illustrated by the history of the United States, are but the practical demonstration of principles which the noblest spirits of England advocated with their pens, and often sealed with their blood. It is through an intimate and direct relation with the past of the Old World, and as initiative to her ultimate self-enfranchisement, that our history daily grows in value and interest, unfolds new meaning, and becomes endeared to all thinking men. It is a link between two great cycles of human progress; the ark that, floating safely on the ocean-tide of hu- manity, preserves those elements of national freedom which are the vital hope of the world. 551. Glorious, however, as is the theme, it is only within the last quarter of a century that it has found any adequate illustra- tion. The labors of American historians have been, for the most part, confined to the acquisition of materials, the unadorned record of facts ; their subjects have been chiefly local ; and in very few cases have their labors derived any charm from the graces of style, or the resources of philosophy ; they are usually crude memoranda of events, not always reliable, though often curious. In a few instances care and scholarship render such contributions to American history intrinsically valuable; but, CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 323 taken together, they are rather materials for the annalist than complete works, and as such will prove of considerable value. It is to collect and preserve these and other records that histor- ical societies have been formed in so many of the states. A store- house of data is thus formed, to which the future historian can resort; and probably the greater part of the local narratives is destined either to be re- written with all the amenities of literary tacl and refinement, or, cast in the mould of genius, become iden- tified with the future triumphs of the American novelist and poet. Jn the mean time, all honor is due to those who have assiduously labored to record the great events which have here occurred, and to preserve the memories of our patriots. Jared Sparks, late pres- ident of Harvard University, has labored most effectually in this sphere. In a series of well-written biographies, and in the col- lected Letters of Washington and Franklin, which he has edited, we have a rich fund of national material. Nor should the " Ar- chives " of the venerable Peter Force be forgotten.* * Among the local and special histories, all more or less valuable as books of reference, and some having both literary and authentic merit, arc Belknap's New Hampshire, Sullivan's Maine, Morton's New Bug/ami Memorial, TrumbuH's Connecticut, Smith's yew York, Watson's Annuls of Pennsylvania, Williams's Vermont, Stephens's Georgia. Minot's Massachusetts, Stith's Vir- gmia, Winthrop's Journal, Thatcher's Journal, Flint's Western States, Gayerre's Louisiana, O'Callahan's A'fw York, Frond's Pennsylvania, Moultrie's Revolution in North aw/ South Car- olina anil Georgia, Bishop White's Histori/ of the Epif copal Church, Jefferson's Note* on Vir- ginia, Barton's Florida, Young's Chronicles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Bait and Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of Neiv J'l.umouth, in N. E. Cheever's Journal of the Pil- grims, Frothingham's History of the Siege of Boston, Hammond's Political History of .\'no York, Holmcs's Annals, Kip's Earl// Jesuit Missions in North America, Upham's History of the Salem Witchcraft, Mayer's History of the. Mexican War, Miner's History of Wyoming, Mar- tnettc's Hittsru of the VaUt'i/ of the Mi?ri*sippi, Newel 1's fliftory of the devolution in Texas, Smith's Virginia, Sprague's History of the Florida War, J. T. Irving's Conquest, of Florida, Thomas's Historical Account of Pennsylvania, Thompson's Long Island, Buckingham's Remi- niscences, Whittier's Supernaturalism in Sew England, Pickett's Alabama, Thomas's History of Printing, Morton's Louisiana. Maey's Nantuckel, Sewell's Quakers, Drake's Indians, Camther's Cavaliers of Virginia, Alden's Collections, Francis Baylies's Colony of Plymouth, Bradford's History, and Green's Historical Studies. There are also many interesting volumes of American biography. Those of revolutionary and colonial times are embodied in the series edited by Sparks, and among other pleasing and valuable works in this department are the following: Marshall's Life of Washington, Tudor's Otis, Austin's Gerry, Wirt's Patrick Henry, Wheaton's I'inckney, the Life of Jos i ah Quincy by his son, Colden's Fulton, the Life of John Adams by his grandson, Tucker's Jefferson, Knapp's American Biographies, Biddle's Cabot, the Life of Alexander Hamilton by his son, the Life of Washington, Franklin. John Jay, Gouvernfitr Morris, by Sparks, Gibbs's Life of Wolcott, Ken- nedy's Life of Wirt. Lite of Judge Story by his son. Life of William E. Channing by his neph- ew, Life of Samuel Adams, of General Greene, of Joseph Warren, of Chief Justice Parsons by his son, of Governor Winthro/>, of Theodore Parker, of Washington Irving, &c., Parton's Lives of Franklin, Burr, and Jnckson, and tlie Life and tetters of Washington Irving by his nephew, P. M. Irving, Life of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Dunlap's American Theatre and History of the. Arts of Design, Lives of Generals Putnam, Greene, Marion, and Captain Smith, by W. Gilmore Simms, Colonel Stone's Life of Brant and /{ed Jacket, Davis's Life of Aaron Burr, Life of Heed, Life of Stirling. Sabine's Amnrican Loyalists, Wynne's Lives of Eminent Americans. Osgood's Studies in C!>ri.*ti>in Biography. Sir*. Let's Hnytiennts, Mrs. EUett's Women of the devolution, Shcrburnc's Paul Jones, and Mackenzie's Dvcatur and Perry. 824 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. 552. Among the earliest and most indefatigable laborers in the field of history was Ramsay. His Historical Vteiv of the World> from the earliest Record to the Nineteenth Century ', with a particular Reference to the State of Society, Literature, Re- ligion, and Form of Government of the United States of America, was published in 1819; a previous work early in 1817; and more than forty years, during intervals of leisure in an active life, were thus occupied by a man not more remarkable for mental assiduity than for all the social graces and solid excellences of human character. 553. Dr. David Ramsay, a native of Lancaster county, Penn- sylvania, was the son of an Irish emigrant. After graduating at Princeton College, and, according to the custom of the period, devoting two years to private tuition, he studied medicine, and removed to Charleston, South Carolina, where he soon became a distinguished patriotic writer. He was a surgeon in the Ameri- can army, and active in the councils of the land, suffering, with other votaries of independence, the penalty of several months' banishment to St. Augustine. He earnestly opposed, in the legislature of the state, the confiscation of loyalist property. In 1782 he became a member of the Continental Congress; he three years after represented the Charleston district, and for a year was president of that body, in the absence of Hancock. He died in 1815, in consequence of wounds received from the pistol of a maniac. Remarkable for a conciliatory disposition and ardent patriotism, he was a fluent speaker, and a man of great literary industry. Besides a History of the Revolution in South Carolina, which was translated and published in France, a History of the American Revolution, which reached a second edition, a Life of Washington, and a History of SoiUh Carolina, he left a History of the United States, from their first settlement to the year 1808, afterwards continued, by other hands, to the treaty of Ghent, and published, a monument of his unwearied and zealous research, and patient labor for the good of the pub- lic and the honor of his country. 554. The most successful attempt yet made to reduce the cha- otic but rich materials of American history to order, beauty, and moral significance, is the work of George Bancroft. ( ) This author was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the year 1800: he is the son of Rev. Aaron Bancroft, D. D., for more than half a century minister of that town, a man highly venerated, and CHAP. I. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 325 devoted to historical research, particularly as regards his native country. Thus under the paternal roof, and from his earliest age, the sympathies and taste of the son were awakened to the subject of American history. The inadequate history of Judge Marshall, and the careful one relating to the colonial period by Grahame, were previously the only works devoted to the subject. Our revolution, in its most interesting details, was known in Eu- rope chiefly through the attractive pages of Carlo Botta. With the ground thus unoccupied, Mr. Bancroft commenced his labors, lie was prepared for them not only by culture and talent, but by an earnest sympathy with the spirit of the age he was to illus- trate. Having passed through the discipline of a brilliant scho- lastic career at the best university in the country, studied theol- ogy, and engaged in the classical education of youth, he had also visited Europe, and become imbued with the love of German literature ; he was for two years a pupil of Heeren, at Gottingen, and mingled freely with the learned coteries of Berlin and Hei- delberg. His two first published works, after his return to the United States, are remarkably suggestive of his traits of mind, and indicate that versatility which is so desirable in an histo- rian. These were a small volume of metrical pieces, mainly ex- pressive of his individual feelings and experience; and a trans- lation of Professor Heeren's Reflections on the Politics of Ancient Greece: thus early both the poetic and the philosophic elements were developed; and although, soon after, Mr. Bancroft entered actively into political life, and held several high offices under the general government, including that of minister to Great Britain, he continued to prosecute his historical researches, under the most favorable auspices, both at home and abroad, and from time to time put forth the successive volumes of his Plistory of the United States. To this noble task he brought great and patient industry, an eloquent style, and a capacity to array the theme in the garb of philosophy. Throughout he is the advo- cate of democratic institutions ; and in the early volumes, where, by the nature of the subject, there is little scope for attractive detail, by infusing a reflective tone, he rescues the narrative from dryness and monotony. But it is the under-current of thought, rather than the brilliant surface of description, which gives in- tellectual value to Bancroft's Htstorv, and has secured for it so high and extensive a reputation. In sentiment and principles it is thoroughly American ; but in its style and philosophy it 326 A SKETCH OF CIJAP. I. has that broad and eclectic spirit appropriate both to the general interest of the subject and the enlightened sympathies of the age. 555. Hildreth's History of the United States will probably be- come a standard book of reference. ( ) Rhetorical grace and effect, picturesqueness and the impress of individual opinion, are traits which the author either rejects or keeps in abeyance. His narrative is plain and straightforward, confined to facts which he seems to have gleaned with great care and conscien- tiousness. The special merit of his work consists in the absence of whatever can possibly be deemed either irrelevant or osten- tatious. A Plistory of Liberty, by Samuel Eliot, is the work of scholarship and taste, but not of poetic inspiration or philoso- phy; it is, however, an elegant addition to our native writings in this sphere. In a popular form, the most creditable perform- ance is the Field-Book of the Revolution, by Benson J. Lossing ( ), a wood-engraver by profession, who has visited all the. scenes of that memorable war, and, with pen and pencil, delin- eated each incident of importance, and every object of local interest. His work is one which is destined to find its way to every farmer's heart, and to all the school libraries of our country. 556. The freshness of his subjects, the beauty of his style, and the vast difficulties he bravely surmounted, gained for William II. Prescott not only an extensive but a remarkably speedy repu- tation, after the appearance of his first history. ( ) He was the grandson of Colonel William Prescott, who commanded the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the 4th of May, 1796. Educated in boyhood by Dr. Gardiner, a fine classical teacher, he entered Harvard College in 1814. He studied law, and passed two years in Europe. In 1838 was published his History of Ferdinand and Isabella, which met with almost immediate and unprecedented success. It was soon translated into all the modern European languages. He died in Boston, January 23, 1859. Many years of study, travel, and occasional practice in writing, preceded the long-cherished de- sign of achieving an historical fame. Although greatly impeded, at the outset, by a vision so imperfect as to threaten absolute blindness, in other respects he was singularly fortunate. Unlike the majority of intellectual aspirants, he had at his command the means to procure the needful but expensive materials for illus- trating a subject more prolific, at once, of romantic charms and great elements of human destiny, than any unappropriated theme offeicd by the whole range of history. It included the momen- CIIAP.L AMERICAN LITERATURE. 327 tous voyage of Columbus, the fall of the Moorish empire in Spain, and the many and eventful consequences thence resulting. Aided by the researches of our minister at Madrid,* himself an enthusiast in letters, Mr. Prescott soon possessed himself of am- ple documents and printed authorities. These he caused to be read to him, and during the process dictated notes, which were afterwards so frequently repeated orally that his mind gradually possessed itself of all the important details ; and these he clothed in his own language, arranged them with discrimination, and made out a consecutive and harmonious narrative. Tedious as such a course must be, and laborious in the highest degree as it proved, I am disposed to attribute to it, in a measure at least, some of Mr. Prescott's greatest charms as an historian the remarkable evenness and sustained harmony, the unity of con- ception and ease of manner, as rare as it is delightful. The History of Ferdinand and Isabella is a work that unites the fas- cination of romantic fiction with the grave interest of authentic events. Its author makes no pretension to analytical power, except in the arrangement of his materials; he is content to de- scribe, and his talents are more artistic than philosophical ; nei- ther is any cherished theory or principle obvious ; his ambition is apparently limited to skilful narration. Indefatigable in re- search, sagacious in the choice and comparison of authorities, serene in temper, graceful in style, and pleasing in sentiment, he possesses all the requisites for an agreeable writer; while his subjects have yielded so much of picturesque material and roman- tic interest, as to atone for the lack of anymore original or bril- liant qualities in the author. Ferdinand and Isabella was fol- lowed by The Conquest of Mexico, and The Conquest of Peru. The scenic descriptions and the portraits of the Spanish leaders, and of Montezuma and Guatimozin, in the former work, give to it all the charm of an effective romance. Few works of imagination have more power to win the fancy and touch the heart. The in- sight afforded into Aztec civilization is another source of interest. 5,") 7. Another of the few standard works in this department, of native origin, is the Life and Voyages of Columbus, by Wash- ington Irving. Ostensibly a biography, it partakes largely of the historical character. As in the case of Prescott, the friendly suggestions of our minister at Madrid greatly promoted the en- terprise. The work is based on the researches of Navarette; * Alexander H. Everett 328 A SKETCH OF CHAP. I. and it is a highly fortunate circumstance that the crude though invaluable data thus gathered were first put in shape and adorned with the elegances of a polished diction, by an American writer at once so popular and so capable as Irving. The result is a Life of Columbus, authentic, clear, and animated in narration, graphic in its descriptive episodes, and sustained and finished in style. It is a permanent contribution to English as well as American literature, one which was greatly needed, and most appropri- ately supplied. 558. Henry Wheaton, long our minister at Berlin, is chiefly known to literary fame by his able Treatise on International La-v ; but, while charge d'affaires in Denmark, he engaged with zeal in historical studies, and published in London, in 1831, a History of the Northmen, a most curious, valuable, and suggestive, though limited work. 559. James Fenimore Cooper's Naval History of the United States, although not so complete as is desirable, is a most inter- esting work, abounding in scenes of generous valor and rare ex- citement, recounted with the tact and spirit which the author's taste and practice so admirably fitted him to exhibit on such a theme. Some of the descriptions of naval warfare are pictu- resque and thrilling in the highest degree. The work, too, is an eloquent appeal to patriotic sentiment and national pride. It is one of the most characteristic histories, both in regard to sub- ject and style, yet produced in America. 560. One of the most satisfactory of recent historical works is The Conspiracy of Pontiac, by Francis Parkman, of Boston. During a tour in the Far West, where he hunted the buffalo and fraternized with the Indians, the author gained that practical knowledge of aboriginal habits and character which enabled him to delineate the subject chosen with singular truth and effect. Having faithfully explored the annals of the French and Indian war, he applied to its elucidation the vivid impressions derived from his sojourn in forest and prairie, his observation of Indian life, and his thorough knowledge of the history of the Red Men. The result is not only a reliable and admirably planned narrative, but one of the most picturesque and romantic yet produced in America. Few subjects are more dramatic and rich in local associations ; and the previous discipline and excel- lent style of the author have imparted to it a permanent attrac- tion. Pioneers of France in the New World is a charming his- torical narrative from the same pen. CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 329 CHAPTER II. Belles Lettres. Influence of British Essayists. FRANKLIN. DENNIE. Signs of Literary Improvement. JONATHAN OLDSTYLE. WASHINGTON IRVING. His Knickerbocker. Sketch-Book. His other Works. Popularity. Tour on the Prairies. Character as an Author. DANA. WILDE. HUDSON. GRISWOLD. LOWELL. WHIPPLE. TICKNOR. WALKER. WAYLAND. JAMES. EMERSON. Transccndentalists. MADAME OSSOLI. Emerson's Essays. ORVILLE DEWEY. Humorous Writers. Belles Lettres. TUDOR. WIRT. SANDS. FAY. WALSH. MITCHELL. KIMBALL. American Travellers. Causes of their Success as Wri- ters. Fiction. CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN. His Novels. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. His Novels their Popularity and Characteristics. NATHANIEL HAW- THORNE. His Works and Genius. Other American Writers of Fiction. 5G1. THE colloquial and observant character given to English literature by the wits, politicians, and essayists of Queen Anne's time, the social and agreeable phase which the art of writing exhibited in the form of the Spectator, Guardian, Tatler, and other popular works of the kind, naturally found imitators in the American colonies. The earliest indication of a taste for belles lettres is .the republication, in the newspapers of New England, of some of the fresh lucubrations of Steele and Ad- dison. The Lay Preacher, by Dennie, ( ) was the first suc- cessful imitation of this fashionable species of literature : more characteristic, however, of th'e sound common sense and utili- tarian instincts of the people, were the Essays of Franklin, com- menced in his brother's journal, then newly established at Boston. Taste for the amenities of intellectual life, however, at this period, was chiefly gratified by recourse to the emana- tions of the British press ; and it is some years after that we perceive signs of that native impulse in this sphere which proved the germ of American literature. "If we are not mistaken in the signs of the times," says Buckminster (in an oration deliv- ered at Cambridge, and published in the Anthology, a Boston Magazine, which, with the Port Folio, issued at Philadelphia, were the first literary journals of high aims in America), "the genius of our literature begins to show symptoms of vigor, and to meditate a bolder flight. The spirit of criticism begins to 330 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. plume itself, and education, as it assumes a more learned form, will take a higher aim. If we are not misled by our hopes, the dream of ignorance is at least broken, and there are signs that the period is approaching when we may say of our country, Tints jam rcgnat Apollo" This prophecy had received some confirmation in the grace and local observation manifest in a series of letters which appeared in the Nezv Tork Chronicle, signed Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. the first productions of Wash- ington Irving, ( ) the Goldsmith of America, who was born in New York, April 6, 1783. Symptoms of alarming disease i.oon after induced a voyage to Europe; and he returned to the Island of Manhattan, the scene of his boyish rambles and youth- ful reveries, with a mind expanded by new scenes, and his nat- ural love of travel and elegant literature deepened. Although ostensibly a law student in the office of Judge Hoffman, his time was devoted to social intercourse with his kindred, who were established in business in New York, and a few genial compan- ions, to meditative loiterings in the vicinity of the picturesque river so dear to his heart, and to writing magazine papers. The happy idea of a humorous description of his native town, under the old Dutch governors, was no sooner conceived than executed with inimitable wit and originality. Not then contemplating the profession of letters, he did not take advantage of the remarka- ble success that attended this work, of which Sir Walter Scott thus speaks in one of his letters to an American friend : "I beg you to accept my best thanks for the uncommon degree of en- tertainment which I have received from the most excellently jocose history of New York. I am sensible that as a stranger to American parties and politics, I must lose much of the con- cealed satire of the piece ; but I must own that, looking at the simple and obvious meaning only, I have never read anything so closely resembling the style of Dean Swift as the annals of Diedrich Knickerbocker. I have been employed these few even- ings in reading them aloud to Mrs. S. and two ladies who are our guests, and our sides have been absolutely sore with laugh ing. I think, too, there are passages which indicate that the au thor possesses power of a different kind, and has some touches which remind me much of Sterne." Salmagundi, which Mr. Irving had previously undertaken, in conjunction with Paul- ding, proved a hit, and established the fame of its authors; it was in form and method of publication imitated from ths CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 331 Spectator, but in details, spirit, and aim, So exquisitely adapted to the latitude of New York, that its appearance was hailed with a delight hitherto unknown ; it Avas, in fact, a complete triumph of local genius. From these pursuits, the author turned to com- mercial toil, in connection with which he embarked for England in 1815 ; and while there, a reverse of fortune led to his resuming the pen as a means of subsistence. In his next work, the Sketch- Book, Sir Walter's opinion of his pathetic vein was fully realized : The Wife, The Pride of the Village, and The Broken Heart, at once took their places as gems of English sentiment and descrip- tion. Nor were the associations of home inoperative; and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow first gave a " local habitation," in our fresh land, to native fancy. His impressions of domestic life in Great Britain were soon after given to the public in Brace- bridge Hall, and some of his continental experiences embodied in the Tales of a Traveller, Soon after, Mr. Irving visited Spain to write the Life of Columbus, to which we have before alluded. His sojourn at the Alhambra, and at Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, are the subjects of other graceful and charming volumes ; while Astoria, or Anecdotes of an Enterprise beyond the Rocky Mountains, and the Life of Mohammed, proved solid as well as elegant contributions to our standard literature; and the Life of Washington, a standard national biography. 5G2. The Tour on the Prairies appeared in 1836. It is an unpretending account, comprehending a period of about four weeks, of travelling and hunting excursions upon the vast west- ern plains. The local features of this interesting region have been displayed to us in several works of fiction, of which it has formed the scene; and more formal illustrations of the extensive domain denominated The West, and its denizens, have been re- peatedly presented to the public. But in this volume one of the most extraordinary and attractive portions of the great subject is discussed, not as the subsidiary part of a romantic story, nor yet in the desultory style of epistolary composition, but in the deliberate, connected form of a retrospective narration. When we say that the Tour on the Prairies is rife with the character- istics of its author, no ordinary eulogium is bestowed. His graphic power is manifest throughout. The boundless prairies stretch out inimitably to the fancy, as the eye scans his descrip- tions. The athletic figures of the riflemen, the gayly arrayed Indians, the heavy buffalo, and the graceful deer, pass in strong 332 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. relief and startling contrast before us. We are stirred by the bustle of the camp at dawn, and soothed by its quiet or delighted with its picturesque aspect under the shadow of night. The imagination revels amid the green oak clumps and verdant pea vines, the expanded plains and the glancing river, the forest aisles, and the silent stars. Nor is this all. Our hearts thrill at the vivid representations of a primitive and excursive existence; we involuntarily yearn, as we read, for the genial activity and the perfect exposure to the influences of Nature in all her free magnificence, of a woodland and adventurous life ; the morning strain of the bugle, the excitement of the chase, the delicious repast, the forest gossiping, the sweet repose beneath the canopy of heaven how inviting, as depicted by such a pencil ! 5G3. Nor has the author failed to invigorate and render doubly attractive these descriptive drawings, with the peculiar light and shade of his own rich humor, and the mellow softness of his ready sympathy. A less skilful draughtsman would, perhaps, in the account of the preparations for departure (Chapter III.), have spoken of the hunters, the fires, and the steeds but who, except Geoffrey Crayon, would have been so quaintly mindful of the little dog, and the manner in which he regarded the oper- ations of the farrier? How inimitably the Bee Hunt is por- trayed ! and what have we of the kind so racy as the account of the Republic of Prairie Dogs, unless it be that of the Rookery in Bracebridge Hall? What expressive portraits are the deline- ations of our rover's companions! How consistently drawn throughout, and in what fine contrast, are the reserved and sat- urnine Beatte, and the vain-glorious, sprightly, and versatile Tonish ! A golden vein of vivacious, yet chaste comparison that beautiful, yet rarely well-managed species of wit, and a wholesome and pleasing sprinkling of moral comment that delicate and often most efficacious medium of useful impressions intertwine and vivify the main narrative. Something, too, of that fine pathos which enriches his earlier productions, en- hances the value of the present. He tells us, indeed, with com- mendable honesty, of his new appetite for destruction, which the game of the prairie excited ; but we cannot fear for the tenderness of a heart that sympathizes so readily with suffering, and yields so gracefully to kindly impulses. He gazes upon the noble courser of the wilds, and wishes that his freedom may be perpetuated ; he recognizes the touching instinct which leads the CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 333 wounded elk to turn aside and die in retiracj; he reciprocates the attachment of the beast which sustains him, and, more than all, can minister even to the foibles of a fellow-being, rather than mar the transient reign of human pleasure. 5G4r. Washington Irving's last days were passed at his con- genial home, " Sunnjside," on the banks of his favorite river, the Hudson. To the revised edition of his works he added many Spanish legends, home sketches, and his elaborate biography of Washington. After so many years passed abroad, and his residence as American minister at the Court of Spain, and after so long and prosperous a literary, and so genial and endeared a social, career, he died surrounded by his kindred, to whom he was the life-long benefactor, crowned with honorable fame and the affection of his countrymen on the 29th of November, 1859, a t the age of seventy-six. o(I5. It has been said that Mr. Irving, at one period of his life, seriously proposed to himself the profession of an artist. The idea was a legitimate result of his intellectual constitution; and although he denied its development in one form, in another it has fully vindicated itself. Many of his volumes are a collec- tion of sketches, embodied happily in language, since thereby their more general enjoyment is insured, but susceptible of im- mediate transfer to the canvas of the painter. These are like a fine gallery of -pictures, wherein all his countrymen delight in many a morning lounge and evening reverie. 5(!6. Within the last half century, a number of critics, en- dowed with acute perceptions and eloquent expression, as well as the requisite knowledge, have arisen to elucidate the tenden- cies, define the traits, and advocate the merits of modern writers. By faithful translations, able reviews, lectures and essays, the best characteristics of men of literary genius, schools of philos- ophy, poetry, and science have been rendered familiar to the cultivated minds of the nation. Thus Richard H. Dana has ex- plored and interpreted, with a rare sympathetic intelligence, the old English drama; Andrews Norton, the authenticity of the Gospels; Richard H. Wilde, the love and madness of Tasso; Alexander H. Everett, the range of contemporary French and German literature; Professor Reed, the poetry of Wordsworth; Henry N. Hudson, the plays of Shakspeare; John S. Hart, the Faery Queen ; Russell Lowell, the older British poets; and Edwin P. Whipple, the best authors of Great Britain and Amer- 334 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. ica. Our numerous "Female Prose Writers" have also found an intelligent and genial historian and critic in Professor Hart. 5G7. For the chief critical and biographical history of litera- ture in the United States, we are indebted to E. A. and George Dujckinck's Cyclopedia of American Literature, two copious and interesting volumes, popular at home and useful abroad, giving an elaborate account of what has been done by American writers from the foundation of the country to the present hour. 568. The philosophic acuteness, animated and fluent diction, and thorough knowledge of the subjects discussed, render Mr. Whipple's critical essays among the most agreeable reading of the kind. His reputation as an eloquent and sagacious critic is now firmly established. Both in style and thought these critical essays are worthy of the times ; bold without extravagance, re- fined, yet free of dilettanteism, manly and philosophic in senti- ment, and attractive in manner.* The most elaborate single work, however, in the history of literature, is George Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, ( ) the result of many years' research, and so complete and satisfactory, that the best Euro- pean critics have recognized it a permanent authority; it is both authentic and tasteful; the translations .are excellent, the ar- rangement judicious, and the whole performance a work of genuine scholarship. It supplies a desideratum, and is an in- teresting and thorough exposition of a subject at once curious, attractive, and of general literary utility. James Walker and Francis Wayland, although of widely diverse theological opin- ions, are both expositors of moral philosophy, to which they have made valuable contributions. Henry James, of Albany, ( ) is the most argumentative and eloquent advocate of new social prin- ciples in the country; and Ralph Waldo Emerson, ( ) by a certain quaintness of diction and boldly speculative turn of mind, has achieved a wide popularity. It is, however, to a peculiar verbal facility and aphoristic emphasis, rather than to any constructive genius, that he owes the impression he creates. 509. Whoever turns to Emerson's Essays, or to the writings of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (whose remarkable acquirements, moral courage, and tragic fate, render her name prominent among our female authors), for a system, a code, or even a set of definite principles, will be disappointed. The chief good thus * Essays and Reviews; Literature and Life; Character aad Characteristic Hon. ;IIAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 335 ar achieved by this class of thinkers has been negative; they lave emancipated many minds from the thraldom of local pre- judices and prescriptive opinion, but have failed to reveal any )ositive and satisfactory truth unknown before. Emerson has an inventive fancy; he knows how to clothe truisms in startling costume ; he evolves beautiful or apt figures and apothegms that strike at first, but when contemplated, prove, as has been said, sually either true and not new, or new and not true. His vol- umes, however, are suggestive, tersely and often gracefully writ- m : they are thoughtful, observant, and speculative, and indicate a philosophic taste rather than power. As contributions to American literature, they have the merit of a spirit, beauty, and reflective tone previously almost undiscoverable in the didactic writings of the country. A writer of more consistency in ethics, and a sympathy with man more human, is Orville Dewey, ( ) whose discourses abound in earnest appeals to consciousness, in a noble vindication of human nature, and a faith in progressive deas, often arrayed in touching and impressive rhetoric. 570. We have not been wanting in excellent translators, espe- cially of German literature; our scholars and poets have admi- rably used their knowledge of the language in this regard. The first experiment was Bancroft's translation of Heeren, already referred to; and since then, some of the choicest lyrics and best philosophy of Germany have been given to the American public >y Professor Longfellow, George Ripley, R. W. Emerson, John S. Dwight, S. M. Fuller, George H. Calvert, Rev. C. T. Brooks, W. H. Channing, F. H. Hedge, Samuel Osgood, and others. Dr. Mitchell, of New York, translated Sannazario's Italian >oems, Mrs. Nichols the Promessi Sposi of Manzoni, and Dr. Parsons, of Boston, has made the best metrical translations into English of Dante's great poem. 571. The most elaborate piece of humor in our literature has been already mentioned Irving's facetious history of his native town. The sketch entitled The Stout Gentleman, by the same genial author, is another inimitable attempt in miniature, as well as some of the papers in Salmagundi. The Letters of Jack Downing may be considered an indigenous specimen in this department; and also the Charcoal Sketches of Joseph C. Neal, the Ollapodiana of Willis G. Clarke, the Puffer Hopkins of Cornelius Matthews, and many scenes by Thorpe, in Mrs. Kirkland's New Home, and the Biglow Papers of J. R. Lowell. 336 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. The original aspects of life in the West and South, as well as those of New England, have also found several apt and graphic delineators; although the coarseness of the subjects, or the care- lessness of the style, will seldom allow them a literary rank. 572. That delightful species of literature which is neither criti- cism nor fiction neither oratory nor history but partakes .somewhat of all these, and owes its charm to a felicitous blend- ing of fact and fancy, of sentiment and thought the belles lettres writing of our country, has gradually increased as the ornamental has encroached on the once arbitrary domain of the useful. Among the earliest specimens were the Letters of a British Spy and the Old Bachelor of William Wirt, and Tudors Letters on New England : in New York this sphere was grace- fully illustrated by Robert C. Sands and Theodore S. Fay, by tale, novelette, and essay; in Philadelphia, by Robert Walsh, who gleaned two volumes from his newspaper articles ; and at present, by the Reveries of a Bachelor of Mitchell, and the con- tributions of N. P. Willis, and in a more vigorous manner in the St. Lcgcr Papers of Kimball. Professors Frisbie, Caldwell, Henry, and others have contributed to the taste and culture of the belles lettres in America.* 573. The literature of no country is more rich in books of travel. From Carter's Letters from Etirope, Dwight's Travels in Neiv England, and Lewis and Clark's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, to the Yucatan of Stephens, and the Two Years before the Mast of Dana, American writers have put forth a succession of animated, intelligent, and most agreeable records of their explorations in every part of the globe. In many in- stances, their researches have been directed to a special object, and resulted in positive contributions "to natural science; thus * There arc a few American books which cannot be strictly classified under either of these di- visions, which not only have a sterling value, but a wide and established reputation, such as the Lefial Commentaries of Chancellor Kent; the Diet ionan/ of Noah Webster; Dr. Rush's Treatise on the I'hiloxophi/ of the Human Voice ; Lectures on Art, by Washington Allston ; the Classical Manuals of Professor Anthon, and Rev. P. Bullions, D. D. ; Dr. Bowditch's translation of the Mi'cnniquc Cileste of La Place; the Ornithology of Wilson and Audubon; Catlin's and School- crai't's works on the Indians ; the ethnological contributions of Squier, Pickering's philologi- cal researches, and the essays on political economy by Albert Gallat'm, Raguet, Dr. Cooper, Tucker, Colton, Wayland, Middleton, Raymond, A. II. Everett, and Henry C. Carry. Francis Bowcn has published able lectures on metaphysical subjects. James D. Nourse, of Kentucky, has published a clever little treatise, the Philosophy of History ; Dr. Palfrey, of Massachusetts, A series of erudite lectures on Jewish antiquities; J. Q. Adams a course on rhetoric; Judgo liuell and Henry Colman valuable works on agriculture, and A. J. Downing ou rural archi- tecture Hid horticulture. CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 337 Audubon's travels are associated with his discoveries in orni- thology, and those of Schoolcraft with his Indian lore. Stephens revealed to our gaze the singular and magnificent ruins of Cen- tral America; Sanderson unfolded the hygiene of life in Paris; Flint guided our steps through the fertile valleys of the West, and Irving and Hoffman brought its scenic wonders home to the coldest fancy.* 571. Romantic fiction, in the United States, took its rise with the publication of Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown, in 1798; attained its most complete and characteristic development in the long and brilliant career, as a novelist, of James Feni- more Cooper; ( ) and is now represented, in its artistic ex- cellence, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Brown was born in Phila- delphia, on the i7th of January, 1771. An invalid from infancy, he had the dreamy moods and roaming propensity incident to poetical sympathies; after vainly attempting to interest his mind in the law, except in a speculative manner, he became an author, at a period and under circumstances which afford the best evidence that the vocation was ordained by his idiosyncrasy. With chiefly the encouragement of a few cultivated friends in New York to sustain him, with narrow means and feeble health, he earnestly pursued his lonely career, inspired by the enthusi- asm of genius. His literary toil was varied, erudite, and inde- fatigable. He edited magazines and annual registers, wrote political essays, a geography, and a treatise on architecture, translated Volney's Travels in the United States, debated at clubs, journalized, corresponded, made excursions, and entered ardently into the quiet duties of the fireside and the family. He died at the close of his thirty-ninth year. His character was singularly gentle and pure; and he was beloved, even when not appreciated. It is by his novels, however, that Brown achieved renown. They are remarkable for intensity and supernatural- * It is difficult to enumerate the works in this department; but among them may be justly commended, either for graces of style, effective description, or interesting narrative, and, iii some instances, for all these qualities combined, the Year in $)>ain of Mackenzie, the Winter in Hie West of C. F. Hott'man, the Oregon Trail of Francis Parkman, the Pencillings by the Wat/ of Willis, the Scenes and Thoughts in Europe of George II. Calvert, Longfellow's Outre-mer, the Tijpee of Melville, the Views Afoot of Taylor, Fresh Gleanings by Mitchell, Kile Xotes by George Curtis, Squier's A'icarafiua, and the writings of this kind by Robinson, Long, Melville, Jewett, Speimer.dfeJregg, Townsend, Fremont, Lanman, Bryant, Thorpe, Kendall, Wilson, Web- ber, Colton, Gillespie, Heudley, Uewey, Kip, Silliman, Bigeltiw, Cushing, Wise, Warren, Mitch- eil, Cneever, Catlin, Norman, Wailis, Shaler, Ruschcnberger, King, Breckenridge, Kidder, Brown, Fisk, Lyman, the Exploring Expedition by Wilkes, the Dead Sea Expedition by Lynch, and the voyages of Delano, Cleveland, Coggeshall, aud others. 22 3S8 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. ism. His genius was eminently psychological ; Godwin is his English prototype. To the reader of the present day these writings appear somewhat limited and sketch-like ; but when we consider the period of their composition, and the disadvantages under which they appeared, they certainly deserve to be ranked among the wonderful productions of the human mind. Had his works been as artistically constructed as they were profoundly conceived and ingeniously executed, they would have become standard. As it is, we recognize the rare insight and keen sen- sibility of the man, acknowledge his power to "awaken terror and pity," and lament the want of high finish and effective shape visible in these early and remarkable fruits of native genius. 575. The first successful novel by an American author was the Spy. A previous work, by the same author, entitled Precaution, had made comparatively little impression. It was strongly tinc- tured with an English flavor, in many respects imitative, and, as it afterwards appeared, written and printed under circumstances which gave little range to Cooper's real genius. In 1823, he published the Pioneers. In this and the novel immediately pre- ceding it, a vein of national association was opened, an original source of romantic and picturesque .interest revealed, and an epoch in our literature created. What Cooper had the bold in- vention to undertake, he had the firmness of purpose and the elasticity of spirit to pursue with unflinching zeal. Indeed, his most characteristic trait was self-reliance. He commenced the arduous career of an author in a new country, and with fresh materials : at first, the tone of criticism was somewhat discour- aging; but his appeal had been to the popular mind, and not to a literary clique, and the response was universal and sincere. From this time, he gave to the press a series of prose romances conceived with so much spirit and truth, and executed with such fidelity and vital power, that they instantly took captive the read- er. His faculty of description, and his sense of the adventurous, were the great sources of his triumph. Refinement of style, poetic sensibility, and melodramatic intensity, were elements that he ignored; but when he pictured the scenes of the forest and prairie, the incidents of Indian warfare, the vicissitudes of border life, and the phenomena of the ocean and nautical expe- rience, he displayed a familiarity with the subjects, a keen sym- pathy with the characters, and a thorough reality in the delinea- CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 339 tion, which at once stamped him as a writer of original and great capacity. It is true that in some of the requisites of the novelist he was inferior to. many subsequent authors in the same department. His female characters want individuality and in- terest, and his dialogue is sometimes forced and ineffective ; but, on the other hand, he seized with a bold grasp the tangible and characteristic in his own land, and not only stirred the hearts of his countrymen with vivid pictures of colonial, revolutionary, and emigrant life, with the vast ocean and forest for its scenes, but opened to the gaze of Europe phases of human existence at once novel and exciting. The fisherman of Norway, the mer- chant of Bordeaux, the scholar at Frankfort, and the countess of Florence, in a brief period, all hung with delight over Cooper's daguerreotypes of the New World, transferred to their respective languages. This was no ordinary triumph. It was a rich and legitimate fruit of American genius in letters. To appreciate it w r e must look back upon the period when the Spy, the Pioneers, the Last of the Mohicans, the Pilot, the Red Rover, the Wept of the Wish-ton- Wish, the Water Witch, and the Prairie, were new creations, and remember that they first revealed America to Europe through a literary medium. Cooper's youth was passed in a manner admirably fitted to develop his special talent, and provide the resources of his subsequent labors. Born in Bur- lington, N. J., on the i5th of September, 1789, he was early re- moved to the borders of Otsego Lake, where his father, Judge Cooper, erected a homestead, afterwards inhabited and long oc- cupied by the novelist. He was prepared for college by the Rector of St. Peter's Church, in Albany, and entered Yale in 1802. Three years after, having proved an excellent classical student, and enjoyed the intimacy of several youth afterwards eminent in the land, he left New Haven, and joined the United States navy as a midshipman. After passing six years in the ser- vice, he resigned, married, and soon after established himself on his paternal domain, situated amid some of the finest scenery and rural attraction of his native state. Thus Cooper was early ini- tiated into the scenes of a newly-settled country and a maritime life, with the benefit of academical training and the best social privileges. All these means of culture and development his active mind fully appreciated; his observation never slumbered, and its fruits were industriously garnered. 57G. His nautical and Indian tales form, perhaps, the most '340 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. characteristic portion of our literature. The Bravo is the best of his European novels, and his Naval History is valuable and interesting-. He was one of the most industrious of authors ; his books of travel and biographical sketches are numerous, and possess great fidelity of detail, although not free from prejudice. He is always thoroughly American. His style is national; and when he died in the autumn of 1851, a voice of praise and regret seemed to rise all over the land, and a large and distinguished assembly convened soon after, in New York, to listen to his eulogy pronounced by the poet Bryant. 577. Hawthorne was distinguished for the finish of his style and the delicacy of his psychological insight. ( ) lie com- bines the metaphysical talent of Brown with the refined diction of Irving, For a period of more than twenty years he con- tributed, at intervals, to annuals and magazines, the most ex- quisite fancy sketches and historical narratives, the merit of which was scarcely recognized by the public at large, although cordially praised by the discriminating few. These papers have been collected under the title of Tivice-told Tales, and Mosses from an Old Manse ; and their grace, wisdom, and originality are now generally acknowledged. But it was through the two romances entitled the Scarlet Letter and the House of the Seven Gables that Hawthorne's eminence was reached. They are re- markable at once for a highly finished and beautiful style, the most charming artistic skill, and intense characterization. To these intrinsic and universal claims they add that of native scenes and subjects. Imagine such an anatomizer of the hu- man heart as Balzac, transported to a provincial town of New England, and giving to its houses, streets, and history the ana- lytical power of his genius, and we realize the triumph of Haw- thorne. Bravely adopting familiar materials, he has thrown over them the light and shadow of his thoughtful mind, eliciting a deep significance and a prolific beauty : if we may use the ex- pression, he is ideally true to the real. His invention is felicitous, his tone magnetic; his sphere borders on the supernatural, and yet a chaste expression and a refined sentiment underlie his most earnest utterance; he is more suggestive than dramatic. The early history of New England has found no such genial and vivid illustration as his pages afford. At all points his genius touches the interests of human life, now overflowing with a love of external nature as gentle as that of Thomson, now intent upon CHAP. II. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 341 the quaint or characteristic in life with a humor as. zestful as that of Lamb, now developing the horrible or pathetic with some- thing of John Webster's dramatic terror, and again buoyant with a fantasy as aerial as Shelley's conceptions. And, in each in- stance, the staple of charming invention is adorned with the purest graces of style. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massa- chusetts, educated at Bowdoin College, and after having filled an office in the Salem custom-house, and the post-office of his native town, lived a year on a community farm. He acted as United States consul at Liverpool for several years, and was set- tled in the pleasant country town of Concord, Mass. He died with the pure and permanent fame of genius, having embalmed the experience he enjoyed in Italy and England in the romances of the Marble Faun and Our Old Home. 578. There are many intermediate authors between the three already described in this sphere of literature, of various and high degrees, both of merit and reputation, but whose traits are chiefly analogous to those of the prominent writers we have sur- veyed. Some of them have ably illustrated local themes, others excelled in scenic limning, and a few evinced genius for charac- terization. Paulding, for instance, in Westward Ho, and the Dutchman s Fireside, has given admirable pictures of colonial life; Richard H. Dana, in the Idle Man, has two or three re- markable psychological tales; Timothy Flint, James Hall Thomas, and more recently M'Connell, of Illinois, have written very graphic and spirited novels of western life ; John P. Ken- nedy, of Baltimore, has embalmed Virginia life in the olden time in S-^allow Barn, and Fay that of modern New York; Gil- more Simms, a prolific and vigorous novelist, in a similar form has embodied the traits of southern character and scenery ; Hoff- man, the early history of his native state; Dr. Robert Bird, of Philadelphia, those of Mexico ; William Ware has rivalled Lock- hart's classical romance in his Letters from Palmyra, and Pro- bus : Allston's artist-genius is luminous is Monaldi ; Judd in Margaret has related a tragic story arrayed in the very best hues and outlines of New England life; and Edgar A. Poe, ( ) in his Talcs of the Grotesque and Arabesque, evinces a genius in which a love of the marvellous and an intensity of conception are united with the wildest sympathies, as if the endowments of Mrs. Radcliffe and Coleridge were partially united in one mind. In adventurous and descriptive narration we have Melville and 342 A SKETCH OF CHAP. II. Mayo. John Neal struck off at a heat some half-score of novels that, at least, illustrate a facility quite remarkable ; and, indeed, from the days of the Algerine Captive and the Foresters the first attempts at such writing in this country to the present day, there has been no lack of native fictions. The minor specimens which possess the highest literary excellence are by Irving, Willis, and Longfellow; but their claims rest entirely on style and sentiment; they are brief and polished, but more graceful than impressive. CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 343 CHAPTER III. POETRY. FRENEAU and the early Metrical Writers. MCMFORD, CLIFFTON, ALLSTON, and others. PIERPONT. DANA. HILLHOUSE. SPRAGUE. PERCIVAL. HALLECK. DRAKE, HOFFMAN. WILLIS. LONGFELLOW. HOLMES. LOWELL. BOKER. Favorite Single Poems. Descriptive Poetry. STREET, WHITTIER, and others. BRAINARD. Song- Writers. Other Poets. Female Poets. BRYANT. 579. THE first metrical compositions in this country, recog- nized by popular sympathy, were the effusions of Philip Fre- neau, ( ) a political writer befriended by Jefferson. He wrote many songs and ballads in a patriotic and historical vein, which attracted and somewhat reflected the feelings of his contempo- raries, and were not destitute of merit. Their success was owing, in part, to the immediate interest of the subjects, and in part to musical versification and pathetic sentiment. One of his Indian ballads has survived the general neglect to which more artistic skill and deeper significance in poetry have banished the mass of his verses : to the curious in metrical writings, however, they yet afford a characteristic illustration of the taste and spirit^ the times. Freneau was born in 1752, and died in 1832. The antecedent specimens of verse in America were, for the most part, the occasional work of the clergy, and are remarkable chiefly for a quaint and monotonous strain, grotesque rhymed versions of the Psalms, and tolerable attempts at descriptive poems. The writings of Mrs. Bradstreet, Governor Bradford, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and the witty Dr. Byles, in this department, are now only familiar to the antiquarian. Frank- lin's friend Ralph, and Thomas Godfrey, of Philadelphia, indi- cate the dawn of a more liberal era, illustrated by Trumbull, Dwight, Humphreys, Alsop, and Honeywood ; passages from whose poems show a marked improvement in diction, a more refined scholarship, and genuine sympathy with nature; but, although in a literary point of view they are respectable per- 344 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. formances, and, for the period and locality of their composition, suggestive of a rare degree of taste, there are too few salient points, and too little of an original spirit, to justify any claim to high poetical genius. One of the most remarkable efforts in this branch of letters, at the epoch in question, was doubtless William Mumford's translation of the Iliad a work that, when published, elicited some authentic critical praise. He was a native of Virginia, and his great undertaking was only finished a short period before his death, which occurred in 1825. The verses which have the earliest touch of true sensibility and that melody of rhythm which seems intuitive, are the few bequeathed by William Cliffton, of Philadelphia, born in 1772. After him we trace the American muse in the patriotic songs of R. T. Paine, and the scenic descriptions of Paulding, until she began a loftier though brief flight in the fanciful poems of Allston. 580. Washington Allston ( ) was born in the State of South Carolina in the year 1779, and died at Cambridge, Mass., in 1843. By profession he was a painter, and his works overflow with genius ; still it would be difficult to say whether his pen, his pencil, or his tongue chiefly made known that he was a prophet of the true and beautiful. He believed not in any ex- clusive development. It was the spirit of a man, and not his dexterity or success, by which he tested character. In painting, reading, or writing, his mornings were occupied, and at night he was at the service of his friends. Beneath his humble roof, in his latter years, there were often a flow of wit, a community of mind, and a generous exercise of sympathy which kings might envy. To the eye of the multitude his life glided away in se- cluded contentment, yet a prevailing idea was the star of his being the idea of beauty. For the high, the lovely, the per- fect, he strove all his days. He sought them in the scenes of nature, in the masterpieces of literature and art, in habits of life, in social relations, and in love. Without pretence, without elation, in all meekness, his youthful enthusiasm chastened by suffering, he lived above the world. Gentleness he deemed true wisdom, renunciation of all the trappings of life a duty. He was calm, patient, occasionally sad, but for the most part happy in the free exercise and guardianship of his varied powers. His sonnets are interesting as records of personal feeling. They eloquently breathe sentiments of intelligent admiration or sin- cere friendship ; while the Sylphs of the Season and other longer CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 345 poems show a great command of language and an exuberant fancy.* 581. John Pierpont ( ) wrote numerous hymns and odes for religious and national occasions, remarkable for their va- riety of difficult metres, and for the felicity both of the rhythm, sentiment, and expression. His Airs of Palestine, a long poem in heroic verse, has many eloquent passages; and several of his minor pieces, especially those entitled Passing Aiv ay and My Child, are striking examples of effective versification. The most popular of his occasional poems is The Pilgrim Fathers, an ode written for the anniversary of the landing at Plymouth, and embodying in truly musical verse the sentiment of the -mem- orable day. 582. Richard H. Dana ( ) is the most psychological of American poets. His Buccaneer has several descriptive pas- sages of singular terseness and beauty, although there is a certain abruptness in the metre chosen. The scenery and phe- nomena of the ocean are evidently familiar to his observation ; the tragic and remorseful elements in humanity exert a powerful influence over his imagination ; while the mysteries and aspira- tions of the human soul fill and elevate his mind. The result is an introspective tone, a solemnity of mood lightened occa- sionally by touches of pathos or beautiful pictures. There is a compactness, a pointed truth to the actual, in many of his rhymed pieces, and a high music in some of his blank verse, which suggest greater poetical genius than is actually exhibited. His taste evidently inclines to Shakspeare, Milton, and the old English dramatists, his deep appreciation of whom he has man- ifested in the most subtile and profound criticisms. Of his minoi pieces, the Intimations of Immortality and The Little Bcach- Bird are perhaps the most characteristic of his two phases of expression. 583. James A. Hillhouse ( ) excelled in a species of poetic literature, which, within a few years, has attained eminence from the fine illustrations of Taylor, Browning, Home, Tal- fourd. and other men of genius in England. It may be called the written drama, and, however unfit for representation, is un- surpassed for bold, noble, and exquisite sentiment and imagery. The name of Hillhouse is associated with the beautiful elms of * Artist-Life, or Sketches of American Painters, 346 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. New Haven, beneath whose majestic boughs he so often walked. His home in the neighborhood of this rural city was consecrated bj elevated tastes and domestic virtue. He there, in the inter- vals of business, led the life of a true scholar; and the me- morials of this existence are his poems, Hadad, The Judgment, Percy's Masque, Demetria, and others. In the two former, his scriptural erudition and deep perceptions of the Jewish char- acter, and his sense of religious truth, are evinced in the most carefully finished and nobly-conceived writings. Their tone is lofty, often sublime; the language is finely chosen, and there is about them evidence of gradual and patient labor rare in Amer- ican literature. On every page we recognize the Christian scholar and gentleman, the secluded bard, and the chivalric student of the past. Percy's Masque reproduces the features of an era more impressed with knightly character than any in the annals of England. Hillhouse moves in that atmosphere quite as gracefully as among the solemn and venerable traditions of the Hebrew faith. His dramatic and other pieces are the first instances, in this country, of artistic skill in the higher and more elaborate spheres of poetic writing. He possessed the scholarship, the leisure, the dignity of taste, and the noble sym- pathy requisite thus to "build the lofty rhyme;" and his vol- umes, though unattractive to the mass of readers, have a permanent interest and value to the refined, the aspiring, and the disciplined mind. 584. Charles Sprague ( ) has been called the Rogers of America; and there is an analogy between them in two respects the careful finish of their verses, and their financial occupa- tion. The American poet first attracted notice by two or three theatrical prize addresses; and his success, in this regard, at- tained its climax in a Shakspcare Ode which grouped the char- acters of the great poet with an effect so striking and happy, and in a rhythm so appropriate and impressive, as to recall the best efforts of Collins and Dryden united. A similar composi- tion, more elaborate, is his ode delivered on the second centen- nial anniversary of the settlement of Boston, his native city. A few domestic pieces, remarkable for their simplicity of ex- pression and truth of feeling, soon became endeared to a large circle; but the performance which has rendered Sprague best known to the country as a poet is his metrical essay on Curiosi- ty, delivered in 1829 before the literary societies of Harvard Uni- CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 347 versity. It is written in heroic measure, and recalls the couplets of Pope. The choice of a theme was singularly fortunate. lie traces the passion which " tempted Eve to sin" through its lof- tiest and most vulgar manifestations ; at one moment rivalling Crabbe in the lowliness of his details, and at another Campbell in the aspiration of his song. The serious and the comic alter- nate on every page. Good sense is the basis of the work ; fan- cv, wit, and feeling warm and vivify it; and a nervous tone and finished versification, as well as excellent choice of words, im- part a glow, polish, and grace that at once gratify the ear and captivate the mind. 585. James G. Percival ( ) has been a copious writer of verses, some of which, from their even and sweet flow, their aptness of epithet and natural sentiment, have become house- hold and school treasures; such as The Coral Grove, Neiv Eng- land, and Seneca Lake. His command both of language and metre is remarkable ; his acquirements were very extensive and various, and his life eccentric. Perhaps a facile power of ex- pression has tended to limit his poetic fame, by inducing a dif- fuse, careless, and unindividual method ; although choice pieces enough can easily be gleaned from his voluminous writings to constitute a just and rare claim to renown and sympathy. 58G. The poems of Fitz-Greene Halleck ( ), although limited in quantity, are, perhaps, the best known and most cherished, especially in the latitude of New York, of all American verses. This is owing, in no small degree, to their spirited, direct, and intelligible character, the absence of all vagueness and mysti- cism, and the heartfelt or humorous glow of real inspiration; and in a measure, perhaps, it can be traced to the prestige of his youthful fame, when, associated with his friend Drake, he used to charm the town with the admirable local verses that appeared in the journals of the day, under the signature of Croaker and Co. His theory of poetic expression is that of the most popular masters of English verse manly, clear, -vivid, warm with genuine emotion, or sparkling with true wit. Thj more recent style of metrical writing, suggestive rather than emphatic, undefined and involved, and borrowed mainly from German idealism, he utterly repudiates. All his verses have a vital meaning, and the clear ring of pure metal. They are few, but memorable. The school-boy and the old Knickerbocker both know them by heart. In his serious poems he belongs to 348 A SKETCH OF CHAP. ill. the same school as Campbell, and in his lighter pieces reminds us of Beppo and the best parts of Don Juan, fanny, con- ceived in the latter vein, has the point of "a fine local satire gracefully executed. Burns, and the lines on the death of Drake, have the beautiful impressiveness of the highest elegiac verse. Marco Bozzaris is perhaps the best martial lyric in the language, Red Jacket the most effective Indian portrait, and Twilight an apt piece of contemplative verse ; while Alnwick Castle combines his grave and gay style with inimitable art and admirable effect. As a versifier, he is an adept in that relation of sound to sense which embalms thought in deathless melody. An unusual blending of the animal and intellectual with that full proportion essential to manhood, enables him to utter ap- peals that wake responses in the universal heart. An almost provoking mixture of irony and sentiment is characteristic of his genius. Born in Connecticut, his life has been chiefly passed in the city of New York, and occupied in mercantile affairs. He is a conservative in taste and opinions, but his feelings are chivalric, and his sympathies ardent and loyal; and these, alter- nating with humor, glow and sparkle in the most spirited and harmonious lyrical compositions of the American muse. 587. " Centuries hence, perchance, some lover of ' The Old American Writers ' will speculate as ardently as Monkbarns himself about the site of Sleepy Hollow. Then the Hudson will possess a classic interest, and the associations of genius and patriotism may furnish themes to illustrate its matchless sce- nery. Imagination is a perverse faculty. Why should the ruins of a feudal castle add enchantment to a knoll of the Catskills? Are not the Palisades more ancient than the aqueducts of the Roman Campagna? Can bloody tradition or superstitious le- gends really enhance the picturesque impression derived from West Point? The heart forever asserts its claim. Primeval nature is often coldly grand in the view of one who loves and honors his race ; and the outward world is only brought near to his spirit when linked with human love and suffering, or con- secrated by heroism and faith. Yet, if there ever was a stream romantic in itself, superior, from its own wild beauty, to all ex- traneous charms, it is the Hudson. Who ever sailed between its. banks and scanned its jutting headlands the perpendicular cliffs the meadows over which alternate sunshine and cloud - umbrageous woods, masses of gray rock, dark cedar groves, CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 349 bright grain fields, tasteful cottages, and fairy-like sails; who, after thus feasting both sense and soul through a summer day, has, from a secluded nook of those beautiful shores, watched the moon rise and tip the crystal ripples with light, and not echoed the appeal of the bard ? ' Tell me, where'er thy silver bark be steering, By bright Italian or soft Persian lands, Or o'er those island-studded seas careering, Whose pearl-charged waves dissolve on coral strands ; Tell, if thou visitest, thou heavenly rover, A lovelier scene than this the wide world over.' * "It was where 4 The moon looks down on old Cro'nest, And mellows the shade on his shaggy breast,' that Drake laid the scene of his poem, The Culprit Fay. The story is of simple construction. The fairies are called together, at this chosen hour, not to join in dance or revel, but to sit in judgment on one of their number who has broken his vestal vow. Evil sprites, both of the air and water, oppose the Fay in his mission of penance. He is sadly baffled and tempted, but at length conquers all difficulties, and his triumphant return is hailed with ' dance and song, and lute and lyre.' 588. " There are various tastes as regards the style and spirit of different bards ; but no one, having the slightest perception, will fail to realize at once that the Culprit Fay is a genuine poem. This is, perhaps, the highest of praise. The mass of versified compositions are not strictly poems. Here and there only the purely ideal is apparent. A series of poetical fragments are linked by rhymes to other and larger portions of common- place and prosaic ideas. It is with the former as with moon- beams falling through dense foliage they only checker our path with light. ' Poetry,' says Campbell, ' should come to us in masses of ore, that require little sifting.' The poem before us obeys this important rule. It is ' of imagination all com- pact.' It takes us completely away from the dull level of ordi- nary associations. As the portico of some beautiful temple, through it we are introduced into a scene of calm delight, where Fancy asserts her joyous supremacy, and wooes us to forgetful- ness of all outward evil, and to fresh recognition of the lovely in nature, and the graceful and gifted in humanity."! * Hoffman's Moonlight on the Hudson, f Thoughts on the Poets. 350 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. 589. For some of the best convivial, amatory, and descriptive poetry of native origin, \ve are indebted to Charles Fenno Hoff- man. ( ) The woods and streams, the feast and the \agil, are reflected in his verse with a graphic truth and sentiment that evidence an eye for the picturesque, a sense of the adventurous, and a zest for pleasure. He has written many. admirable scenic pieces that evince not only a careful, but a loving observation of nature : some touches of this kind in the Vigil of Faith are worthy of the most celebrated poets. Many of his songs, from their graceful flow and tender feeling, are highly popular, al- though some of the metres are so like those of Moore as to pro- voke a comparison. They are, however, less tinctured with artifice; and many of them have a spontaneous and natural vitality. 590. The Scripture pieces of N. P. Willis, ( ) although the productions of his youth, have an individual beauty that ren- ders them choice and valuable exemplars of American genius. In his other poems there is apparent a sense of the beautiful and a grace of utterance, often an exquisite imagery, and rich tone of feeling, that emphatically announce the poet; but in the chastened and sweet, as well as picturesque elaboration of the miracles of Christ, and some of the incidents recorded in the Bible, Willis succeeded in an experiment at once bold, delicate, and profoundly interesting. Mclanie is a narrative in verse, full of imaginative beauty and expressive music. The high finish, rare metaphors, verbal felicity, and graceful sentiment of his poems are sometimes marred by a doubtful taste that seems affectation ; but where he obeys the inspiration of nature and religious sentiment, the result is truly beautiful. 591. Henry W. Longfellow ( ) has achieved an extended reputation as a poet, for which he is chiefly indebted to his phil- ological aptitudes and his refined taste. Trained as a verbal artist by the discipline of a poetical translator, he acquired a tact and facility in the use of words, which great natural fluency and "extreme fastidiousness enabled him to use to the utmost advantage. His poems are chiefly meditative, and have that legendary significance peculiar to the German ballad. They also often embody and illustrate a moral truth. There is little or no evidence of inspiration in his verse, as that term is used to suggest the power of an overmastering passion; but there is a thoughtful, subdued feeling that seems to overflow in quiet CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 351 beauty. It is, however, the manner in which this sentiment is expressed, the appositeness of the figures, the harmony of the numbers, and the inimitable choice of words that give effect to the composition. He often reminds us of an excellent mosaic worker, with his smooth table of polished marble indented to receive the precious stones that are lying at hand, which he calmly, patiently, and with exquisite art, inserts in the shape of flowers and fruit. Almost all Longfellow's poems are gems set with consummate taste. His Evangeline is a beautiful reflex of rural life and love, which, from the charm of its pictures and the gentle harmony of its sentiment, became popular, although written in hexameters. His Skeleton in Armor is the most novel and characteristic of his shorter poems; and his Psalms of Life and Excelsior are the most familiar and endeared. He is the artistic, as Halleck is the lyrical and Bryant the picturesque and philosophical, of American poets. 5'J2. The most concise,-apt, and effective poet of the school of Pope, this country has produced, is Oliver Wendell Holmes, ( ) a Boston physician, and son of the excellent author of the An- nals, long a minister of the parish of Cambridge, at which ven- erable seat of learning this accomplished writer was born. His best lines are a series of rhymed pictures, witticisms, or senti- ments, let off with the precision and brilliancy of the scintil- lations that sometimes illumine the northern horizon. The significant terms, the perfect construction, and acute choice of syllables and emphasis, render some passages of Holmes abso- lute models of versification, especially in the heroic measure. Besides these artistic merits, his poetry abounds with fine satire, beautiful delineations of nature, and amusing caricatures of manners. The long poems are metrical essays, more pointed, musical, and judicious, as well as witty, than any that have ap- peared, of the same species, since the Essay on Man and The Dtinciad. His description of the art in which he excels is inimi- table, and illustrates all that it defines. His Old Ironsides an indignant protest against the destruction of the frigate Con- stitution created a public sentiment .that prevented the fulfil- ment of that ungracious design. His verses on Lending an old Punch Bowl are in the happiest vein of that form of writing. About his occasional pieces, there is an easy and vigorous tone like that of Praed; and some of them are the liveliest specimens of finished verse yet written among us. His command of Ian- 352 A SKETCH OF CIIAP. : guage, his ready wit, his concise and pointed style, the nervo bright, and wise scope of his muse, now and then softened by a pathetic touch, or animated by a living picture, are qualities that have firmly established the reputation of Dr. Holmes as a poet, while in professional character and success he has been equally recognized. 593. James R. Lowell, ( ) also a native of Cambridge, unites, in his most effective poems, the dreamy, suggestive character of the transcendental bards with the philosophic sim- plicity of Wordsworth. He has written clever satires, good sonnets, and some long poems with fine descriptive passages. He reminds us often of Tennyson, in the sentiment and the con- struction of his verse. Imagination and philanthropy are the dominant elements in his writings, some of which are marked by a graceful flow and earnest tone, and many unite with these attractions that of high finish. 594. George H. Boker, the author of Calaynos, Anne Bolcyn, and other dramatic pieces, is a native and resident of Philadel- phia. " The glow of his images is chastened by a noble sim- plicity, keeping them within the line of human sympathy and natural expression. He has followed the masters of dramatic writing with rare judgment. lie also excels many gifted poets of his class in a quality essential to an acted play spirit. To the tragic ability he unites aptitude for easy, colloquial, and jocose dialogue, such as must intervene in the genuine Shak- spearian drama, to give relief and additional effect to high emotion. His language, also, rises often to the highest point of energy, pathos, and beauty." 595. A casual dalliance with the Muses is characteristic of our busy citizens, in all professions ; some of these poetical estrays have a permanent hold upon the popular taste and sympathy. Among them may be mentioned Frisbie's Castle in the Air, Norton's Scene after a Summer Shoiver, Henry Ware's Address to the Ursa Major, Pinkney's verses entitled A Health, Palmer's ode to Light, Poe's Raven and The Bells, Cooke's Florence Vane, Parsons's Lines to a Bust of Dante, Wilde's My Life is like a Summer Rose, Albert G. Greene's Old Grimes, Butler's Nothing to Wear, and Woodworth's Old Oaken Bucket. ( ) 596. Extensive circulation is seldom to be hoped for works which appeal so faintly to the practical spirit of our times and people as the class we have thus cursorily examined. Yet, did CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 353 space allow, we should be tempted into a somewhat elaborate argument, to prove that the cordial reception of such books agrees perfectly with genuine utilitarianism. As a people, it is generallj r conceded that we lack nationality of feeling. Narrow reasoners may think that this spirit is best promoted by absurd sensitiveness to foreign comments or testy alertness in regard to what is called national honor. We incline to the opinion, founded on well-established facts, both of history and human nature, that the best way to make an individual true to his po- litical obligations is to promote his love of country; and experi- ence shows that this is mainly induced by cherishing high and interesting associations in relation to his native land. Every well-recorded act honorable to the state, every noble deed con- secrated by the effective pen of the historian, or illustrated in the glowing page of the novelist, tends wonderfully to such a result. Have not the hearts of the Scotch nurtured a deeper patriotism since Sir Walter cast into the furrows of time his peerless romances? No light part in this elevated mission is accorded to the poet. Dante and Petrarch have done much to render Italy beloved. Beranger has given no inadequate expression to those feelings which bind soldier, artisan, and peasant to the soil of France. Here the bard can draw only upon brief chron- icles, but God has arrayed this continent \vith a sublime and characteristic beauty, that should endear its mountains and streams to the American heart; and whoever ably depicts the natural glory of the country touches a chord which should yield responses of admiration and loyalty. In this point of view alone, then, we deem the minstrel who ardently sings of forest and sky, river and highland, as eminently worthy of recognition. This merit may be claimed for Alfred B. Street, of Albany, ( ) who was born and reared amid the most picturesque scenery of the State of New York. Street has an eye for Nature in all her moods. He has not roamed the woodlands in vain, nor have the changeful seasons passed him by without leaving vivid and lasting impressions. These his verse records with unusual fidelity and genuine emotion. Like a true Flemish painter, he seizes upon objects in all their verisimilitude. As we read him, wild flowers peer up from among the brown leaves; the drum of the partridge, the ripple of waters, the flicker- ing of autumn light, the sting of sleety snow, the cry of the pan- ther, the roar of the winds, the melody of birds, and the odor 23 354 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. of crushed pine boughs, are present to our senses. In a foreign land his poems would transport us at once to home. lie is no second-hand limner, content to furnish insipid copies, but draws from reality. His pictures have the freshness of originals. They are graphic, detailed, never untrue, and often vigorous. He is essentially an American poet. His range is limited, and he has had the good sense not to wander from his sphere, candidly ac- knowledging that the heart of man has not furnished him the food for meditation which inspires a higher class of poets. He is emphatically an observer. In England we notice that these qualities have been recognized. His Lost Hunter has been finely illustrated there, thus affording the best evidence of the picturesque fertility of his muse. Many of his pieces also glow with patriotism. His Gray forest Eagle is a noble lyric, full of spirit; his Forest Scenes are minutely, and at the same time elaborately, true. His Indian legends and descriptions of the seasons have a native zest we have rarely encountered. Without the classic refinement of Thomson, he excels him in graphic .power. There is nothing metaphysical in his tone of mind, or highly artistic in his style. But there are an honest directness and cordial faithfulness about him that strike us as remarkably appropriate and manly. Delicacy, sentiment, ideal enthusiasm, are not his by nature; but clear, bold, genial insight and feeling he possesses in a rare degree, and his poems worthily depict the phases of Nature, as she displays herself in this land, in all her picturesque wildness, solemn magnificence, and serene beauty. 597. To the descriptive talent as related to natural scenery, which we have noted as the gift of our best poets, John G. Whit- tier ( ) unites the enthusiasm of the reformer and the sym- pathies of the patriot. There are a prophetic anathema and a bard-like invocation in some of his pieces. He is a true son of New England, and, beneath the calm, fraternal bearing of the Quaker, nurses the imaginative ardor of a devotee both of na- ture and humanity. The early promise of Brainard, ( ) his. fine poetic observation and sensibility, enshrined in several pleasing lyrics, and his premature death, are analogous to the career of Henry Kirke White. John Neal has written some odes, carelessly put together, but having memorable passages. Emerson has published a small volume of quaint rhymes; Cros- wcll wrote several short but impressive church poems, in which he has been ably followed by Cleveland Cox; Bayard Taylor's CHAP. III. AMERICAS LITERATURE. 355 California ballads are full of truth, spirit, and melody, and his <% Picture of St. John " is a melodious and graphic metrical tale ; Albert Pike, of Arkansas, is the author of a series of hymns to the gods, after the manner of Keats, which have justly com- manded favorable notice ; Willis G. Clarke is remembered for his few but touching and finished elegiac pieces. Epes Sargent's Poems of the Sea are worthy of the subject, both in sentiment and style. F. S. Key, of Baltimore, was the author of the Star- Spangled Banner, and Judge Hopkinson, of Philadelphia, wrote Hail, Columbia. George' P. Morris, ( ) among the honored contributors to American poetry,* whose pieces are more or less familiar, is recognized as the song-writer of America. 598. A large number of graceful versifiers, and a few writers of poetical genius, have arisen among the women of America. Southey has recorded, in no measured terms, his estimation of Mrs. Brooks, the author of Zophicl. The sentiment and mel- ody of Mrs. Welby have made the name of Amelia precious in the west. Mrs. Sigourney's metrical writings are cherished by a large portion of the New England religious public. ( ) The Sinless Child of Mrs. Oakes Smith is a melodious and imagina- tive poem, with many verses of graphic and metaphysical significance. The occasional pieces of Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Whitman, Mrs. Hewitt, and Miss Lynch are thoughtful, ear- nest, and artistic. The facility, playfulness, and ingenious conception of Mrs. Osgood ( ) rendered her a truly gifted improwisatrice. Miss Gould has written several pretty fanciful little poems, and Miss Sara Clark's Ariadne is worthy of Mrs. Norton. The Davidsons are instances of rare though melan- choly precocity in the art. The moral purity, love of nature, domestic affection, and graceful expression which characterize the writings of our female poets, are remarkable. Many of them enjoy a high local reputation, and their effusions are quoted with zeal at the fireside. Taste rather than profound sympathies, sentiment rather than passion, and fancv more than imagination, are evident in these spontaneous, gentle, and often * Amnns them are Hill, Godwin, Mellen, Griffin, Ware, Doane, Colton, Rockwell, Sanford, Ward, Gallagher, Aldrich, J. F. Clarke, Hosmer, Burleigh, Noble, Hirst, Head, Matthews, Lord, Wallace, Legare, Miller, Walter, Eastburn, Barker, Sehooleraft, Tappan, Jackson, Meek, Seba Smith. Thuuher, Peabody. tilery, Channiug, Snelling, Murray, Fay, C. C. Moore, J. G. Brooks, A. G. Greene, Bethime, Carlos Wilcox, Fmbie, Goodrich, Ciason, Lcggett, Fairtield, Dawes, Bright, Conrad, Prentice, Sinnns, John II. Bryant, Lawrence, Benjamin, Very, Cutler, Crancli, Stcaduian, liuutingtun, Saxe, Dewey, Fields, lloyt, Jjtoduard. 356 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. picturesque poems. They usually are more creditable to the refinement and pure feelings, than to the creative power or original style of the authors. Among a reading people, how- ever, like our own, these beautiful native flowers, scattered by loving hands, are sweet mementos and tokens of ideal culture and gentle enthusiasm, in delightful contrast to the prevailing hardihood and materialism of character.* 599. In the felicitous use of native materials, as well as in the religious sentiment and love of freedom, united with skill as an artist, William Cullen Bryant is recognized as the best repre- sentative of American poetry ; and we cannot better close this brief survey of native literature than by an examination of his poems ; in which the traits of our scenery, the spirit of our in- stitutions, and the devotional faith that proved the conservative element in our history, are all consecrated by poetic art. (iOO. The first thought which suggests itself in regard to Bry- ant is his respect for the art which he has so nobly illustrated. This is not less commendable than rare. To subserve the objects of party, to acquire a reputation upon which office may be sought, and to gratify personal ambition, the American poet is often tempted to sacrifice his true fame and the dignity of Art to the demands of Occasion. To this weakness Bryant has been almost invariably superior. He has preserved the ele- vation which he so early acquired. He has been loyal to the Muses. At their shrine his ministry seems ever free and sacred, wholly apart from the ordinai-y associations of life. With a pure heart and a lofty purpose has he hymned the glory of Nature and the praise of Freedom. To this we cannot but, in a great degree, ascribe the serene beauty of his verse. The mists of worldly motives dim the clearest vision, and the sweetest voice * For a very complete and interesting survey of this class of writings, the reader is referred tt> Griswold's Female 1'oets of America. His list comprises nearly a hundred names; the bio- graphical sketches afford a good insight into the domestic culture of the nation; and the speci- mens are various, and often beautiful, including, besides the writers of colonial and revolution- ary times, and those already mentioned, the names of Miss Townsend, Mrs. Gilman, Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Wells, Miss James, Mrs. Ward, Mrs. Ware, Mrs. Gray, Mrs. Little, Mr?. Child, Mrs. Hall, -Mrs. Follen, Mrs. Green, Miss Taggart, Mrs. Cantield, Miss Bogart, Mrs. Mary E. Brooks, MM. Loud, Mrs. Chandler, Mrs. Barnes, Mrs. Kinney, Mrs. Ellctt, Mrs. Scott, Mrs. Dimiies, Mrs. Stephens, Mrs. St. John, Mrs. L. P. Smith, Mrs. Oliver, Miss Mary E. Lee, Mrs. Esling, Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Bailey, Mrs. Thurston, Miss Day, Mrs. Dodd, Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Eunies, Mrs. Emetine Smith, Miss Fuller, Mrs. Pierson, Mr*. Worthiugton, Mrs. Lesvis, Mrs. Mowatt. .Mrs. M'Donahl, Lucy Hooper, Mrs. Mnyo, Miss Jacobs, Mrs. Case, Mrs. Bolton, Miss Woodman, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Wakelicld, Miss E. Lee, Miss Susan Pindar, Caroline May, Mrs. Xi-al, Mrs. fiproat. Mrs. Winslow, Miss Campbell, Miss Bayard, Miss Luicoiu, Edith May, Alice uiici 1'iio.bo Couy, iliss L-'awsoii, Mrs. Lowell, aid ilLis Piiiiiips. CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 357 falters amid the strife of passion. As the patriarch went forth alone to muse at eventide, the reveries of genius have been to Bryant holy and private seasons. They are as unstained by the passing clouds of this troubled existence as the skies of his own " Prairies " by village smoke. G01. Here, where Nature is so magnificent, and civil institu- tions so fresh, where the experiment of republicanism is going on, and each individual must think, if he do not work, Poetry, to illustrate the age and reach its sympathies, should be thought- ful and vigorous. It should minister to no weak sentiment, but foster high, manly, and serious views. It should identify itself with the domestic affections, and tend to solemnize rather than merely adorn, existence. Such are the natural echoes of Amer- ican life, and they characterize the poetry of Bryant. (502. Bryant's love of Nature gives the prevailing spirit to his poetry. The feeling with him seems quite instinctive. It js not sustained by a metaphysical theory, as in the case of Words- worth, while it is imbued with more depth of pathos than is often discernible in Thomson. The feeling with which he looks upon the wonders of Creation is remarkably appropriate to the scenery of the New World. His poems convey, to an extraordi- nary degree, the actual impression which is awakened by our lakes, mountains, and forests. We esteem it one of Bryant's great merits that he has not only faithfully pictured the beauties, but caught the very spirit, of our scenery. His best poems have an anthem-like cadence, which accords with the vast scenes they celebrate. He approaches the mighty forests, whose shadowy haunts only the footstep of the Indian has penetrated, deeply conscious of its virgin grandeur. His harp is strung in harmo- ny with the wild moan of the ancient boughs. Every moss- covered trunk breathes to him of the mysteries of Time, and each wild flower which lifts its pale buds above the brown and withered leaves, whispers some thought of gentleness. We feel, when musing with him amid the solitary woods, as if blessed with a companion peculiarly fitted to interpret their teachings ; and while intent, in our retirement, upon his page, we are sensi- ble, as it were, of the presence of those sylvan monarchs that crown the hill-tops and grace the valleys of our native land. No English park formalized by the hand of Art, no legendary spot like the pine grove of Ravenna, surrounds us. It is not the gloomy German forest, with its phantoms and banditti, but one of those primal, dense woodlands of America, where the 858 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. oak spreads its enormous branches, and the frost-kindled leaves of the maple glow like flame in the sunshine; where the tap of the woodpecker and the whirring of the partridge alone break the silence that broods, like the spirit of prayer, amid the inter- minable aisles of the verdant sanctuary. Any reader of Bryant, on the other side of the ocean, gifted with a small degree of sensibility and imagination, may derive from his poems the very awe and delight with which the first view of one of our majestic forests would strike his mind. G03. The kind of interest with which Bryant regards Nature is common to the majority of minds in which a love of beauty is blended with reverence. This in some measure accounts for his popularity. Many readers, even of poetical taste, are re- pelled by the very vehemence and intensity of Byron. They cannot abandon themselves so utterly to the influences of the outward world as to feel the waves bound beneath them " like a steed that knows his rider; " nor will their enthusiasm so far annihilate consciousness as to make them " a portion of the tempest." Another order of imaginative spirits do not greatly affect the author of the Excursion, from the frequent baldness of his conceptions; and not a few are unable to see the Universe tli rough the spectacles of his philosophy. To such individuals, the tranquil delight with which the American poet expatiates upon the beauties of Creation is perfectly genial. There is no mystical lore in the tributes of his muse. All is clear, earnest, and thoughtful. Indeed, the same difference that exists between true-hearted, natural affection and the metaphysical love of the Platonists may be traced between the manly and sincere lays of Bryant and, the vague and artificial effusions of transcendental bards. The former realize the definition of a poet which de- scribes him as superior to the multitude only in degree, not in kind. He is the priest of a universal religion, and clothes in appropriate and harmonious language sentiments warmly felt and cherished. He requires no interpreter. There is nothing eccentric in his vision. Like all human beings, the burden of daily toil sometimes weighs heavily on his soul; the noisy ac- tivity of common life becomes hopeless; scenes of inhumanity, error, and suffering grow oppressive, or more personal causes of despondency make " the grasshopper a burden." Then he turns to the quietude and beauty of Nature for refreshment. There he loves to read the fresh tokens of creative beneficence. The scented air of the meadows cools his fevered brow. The CHAP. III. AMERICAN LITERATURE. 359 umbrageous foliage sways benignly around him. Vast pros- pects expand his thoughts beyond the narrow circle of worldly anxieties. The limpid stream, upon whose banks he wandered in childhood, reflects each fleecy cloud, and soothes his heart as the emblem of eternal peace. Thus faith is revived ; the soul acquires renewed vitality, and the spirit of love is kindled again at the altar of God. Such views of Nature are perfectly accor- dant with the better impulses of the heart. There is nothing in them strained, unintelligible, or morbid. They are more or less familiar to all, and are as healthful overflowings of our na- ture as the prayer of repentance or the song of thanksgiving. They distinguish the poetry of Bryant, and form one of its dominant charms. GO-t. Bryant is a graphic poet, in the best sense of the word. He has little of the excessive detail of Street, or the homely ex- actitude of Crabbe. Mis touches, like his themes, are usually on a grander scale, yet the minute is by no means neglected. It is his peculiar merit to deal with it wisely. Enough is sug- gested to convey a strong impression, and often by the introduc- tion of a single circumstance, the mind is instantly enabled to complete the picture. It is difficult to select examples of his power in this regard. The opening scene from A Winter Piece is as picturesque as it is true to fact. 605. Bryant is eminently a contemplative poet. His thoughts are not less impressive than his imagery. Sentiment, except that which springs from benevolence and veneration, seldom lends a glow to his pages. Indeed, there is a remarkable absence of those spontaneous bursts of tenderness and passion which constitute the very essence of a large portion of modern verse. He has none of the spirit of Campbell, or the narrative spright- liness of Scott. The few humorous attempts he has published are unworthy of his genius. Love is merely recognized in his poems; it rarely forms the staple of any composition. His strength obviously consists in description and philosophy. It is one advantage of this species of poetry that it survives youth, and is, by nature, progressive. Bryant's recent poems are fully equal, if not superior, to any he has written. With his inimi- table pictures there is ever blended high speculation, or a reflec- tive strain of moral command. Some elevating inference or cheering truth is elicited from every scene cpnsecrated by his muse. A noble simplicity of language, combined with these traits, often leads to the most genuine sublimity of expression. 360 A SKETCH OF CHAP. III. 606. In The Fountain, after a descriptive sketch that brings its limpid flow and flowery banks almost palpably before us, how exquisite is the chronicle that follows ! Guided by the poet, we behold that gushing stream, ages past, in the solitude of the old woods, when canopied by the hickory and plane, the humming- bird playing amid its spray, and visited only by the wolf, who comes to " lap its waters," the deer who leaves her " delicate footprint" on its marge, and the " slow-paced bear that stopped and drank, and leaped across." Then the savage war-cry drowns its murmur, and the wounded foeman creeps slowly to its brink to "slake his death-thirst." Ere long a hunter's lodge is built, " with poles and boughs, beside the crystal well," and at length the lonely place is surrounded with the tokens of civilization. Thus the minstrel, even "From the gushing of a simple fount, Has reasoned to the mighty universe." 607. The very rhythm of the stanzas To a Waterfowl gives the impression of its flight. Like the bird's sweeping wing, they float with a calm, and majestic cadence to the ear. We see that solitary wanderer of the "cold thin atmosphere;" we watch, almost with awe, its serene course, until " the abyss of heaven has swallowed up its form," and then gratefully echo the bard's consoling inference. 608. But it is unnecessary to cite from pages so familiar; or we might allude to the grand description of Freedom, and the beautiful Hymn to Death as among the noblest specimens of modern verse. The great principle of Bryant's faith is that " Eternal Love doth keep In his complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep." 609. To set forth, in strains the most attractive and lofty, thi glorious sentiment, is the constant aim of his poetry. Gifted must be the man who is loyal to so high a vocation. From the din of outward activity, the vain turmoil of mechanical life, it is delightful and ennobling to turn to a true poet, one who scatters flowers along our path, and lifts our gaze to the stars, breaking, by a word, the spell of blind custom, so that we recognize once more the original glory of the universe, and hear again the latent music of our own souls. This high service has Bryant fulfilled. It will identify his memory with the loveliest scenes of his native land, and endeaj: it to her children forever, NOTE TO AMERICAN LITEEATUEE. 361 NOTE TO SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE. 610. To the works of American authors above enumerated, the fifteen years which have since elapsed have added character- istic and valuable materials. Bancroft's History of the United States has now reached its ninth volume, which brings the record far into the epoch of the Revolution. Emerson has added Eng- lish Traits, and The Conduct of Life, to his series of essays ; Longfellow, Hiawatha, Miles Standish, The Wayside Inn, Flower de Luce, and a translation of Dante's Divina Commedia to his poetical writings. Holmes has written a new volume of essays and a novel. Donald G. Mitchell has given to the public two pleasant volumes of rural essays, My Farm at Edge-wood, and Wet Days at Edge-wood, a book of Traveller's Tales, and a novel of New England Life Dr. Johns. Bayard Taylor has published two American stories, Plannah Thiirston, and the Story of Kenneth, and two poems, The Poefs Story, and The Picture of St. John. Sabine and Lossing have continued their popular historical labors; Bushnell added to his philosophical exposition of religious and social subjects; Higginson and Park- man in prose, and Bryant, Whittier and Halleck in poetry, con- tributed new writings to the nation's stock ; while to the previous excellent translations of the masterpieces of German literature by Charles T. Brooks, are to be added the Titan and Hesperus of Richter, the humorous Jobsiad, and Goethe's Faust. 611. Henry James has published a religious and metaphysical treatise called Substance and Shadow ; George H. Calvert, a new volume of foreign travel and sojourn, entitled First Tears in Europe, and an interesting essay, The Gentleman. William W. Story has embodied in a work with the title Roba di Roma, the results of long and patient observation of the habits, cus- toms, and normal aspects of the Eternal City; and William D. Howell gives us a charming record of 'Venetian Life. James Jackson Jarves, in two substantial volumes, Art Studies, and the 362 NOTE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. CHAP. III. Art Idea, has imparted much general historical information and aesthetic philosophy in regard to the fine arts. Saxe, Aldrich, Street, Stoddard, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Aken, Alice Carey, and other poetical writers have added fresh volumes to the library of Amer- ican verse; while in the departments of educational literature, political disquisition, theology, science, popular and juvenile books, adapted to wants of a vast and wide-spread population, the supply of new and desirable works has been constant, and, for the most part, creditable to the average taste, love of knowl- edge, and prevalent intelligence and rectitude. 012. Since the preceding Sketch was written, the obituary rec- ord of our authors has withdrawn some of the earliest and most endeared. Washington Irving died on the 28th of November, 1859, in *- ne rip eness f his a g e an d fame, having, but a few months previous, finished the Life of Washington his last and appropriate labor of love in the field of native literature. To the complete edition of his writings, revised by his own hand in the pleasant autumn of his life, and received by his countrymen with renewed evidences of sympathy and respect, have been added, since his decease, two volumes of uncollected papers con- sisting of Spanish legends, early contributions to the newspaper press, and a few personal memoirs and reminiscences. William Hickling Prescott closed his brief but brilliant literary career on the 28th of January, 1859. His last historical work, Philip //., was left unfinished. James Paulding did not long survive the old friend and literary comrade with whom he wrote Salma- gundi : and the best of this pioneer author's writings will soon be published in a revised and uniform series. 613. Theodore Parker died in Florence, Italy, May 10, 1860. His latest work is entitled Theodore Parker's Experience as a Minister, with some Account of his Early Life and Education for the Ministry an autobiographical narrative which throws much light on the early influences and original endowments whose combination led eventually to his peculiar opinions and original course as a reformer and theologian. For a complete under- standing of his career and character, however, which in many respects were exceptional, a perusal of his life and correspon- dence is requisite. 614. Edward Everett, after the issue of three substantial vol- umes of orations, which, in view of both topics and treatment, way be justly regarded as of national value and significance, at NOTE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. 363 the age of sixty traversed the United States to deliver his ora- tion on the character of Washington, for the twofold patriotic purpose of allaying the sectional animosity which afterwards culminated in civil war, and to raise the funds requisite for the purchase of Mount Vernon the home and tomb of Wash- ington. During the civil conflict the eloquent voice and pen of Everett were constantly pleading and protesting for the Union, and, crowned with this final work of honor and patriotism, he died on the I5th of January, 1865. 615. Nathaniel Hawthorne, since the previous mention of his writings, passed a year in Italy, and gave to the public the grace- ful fruit of that sojourn in one of his most beautiful and charac- teristic romances the Marble Faun. After relinquishing the consulship at Liverpool, and returning to Concord, Massa- chusetts, the results of his observation and reflection during several years' residence in England appeared in a delightful volume of local sketches entitled Our Old Home in style, in- sight, descriptive skill and quiet humor, worthy of his artistic pen and genial yet subtile observation. Hawthorne died at Plym- outh, New Hampshire, May 19, 1864, while on a journey for his health, which had gradually failed. He left a story of Eng- lish life unfinished, and the passages from his note-books which have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly since his death indicate the thoughtfulness with which he contemplated even the most familiar phenomena of life and nature, and the elaborate study whereby he prepared himself to interpret and illustrate them. The wayward yet studious career of Pcrcival terminated in Illi- nois, soon after his geological survey of Wisconsin, May 2, 1856. Many of his poems have obtained a merited popularity; and the eccentricities growing out of his sensitive organization, inde- pendent spirit, and scientific zeal, are well set forth in the re- cently published Life and Letters of the gifted but perverse poet. 616. To this list of the eminent departed must be added the names of many of our clergy who enjoyed and exerted a literary as well as religious influence such as Dr. Edward Hitchcock, Dr. Robinson, Francis Wayland, George Bush, Clement C. Moore, Dr. Alexander, Pise, C. W. Upham, George W. Bethune, Dr. Baird, Starr King, John Pierpont, and others, as well as several useful and respected female authors ; v among them, Mrs. Caroline Kirkland, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Farnham, Hannah F. 3G4 NOTE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. Gould, Alice B. Haven, Mrs. Emma C. Embury, Mrs. Farrar, Miss Leslie, and Miss Maria Cummins; with a number of mis- cellaneous writers, whose labors illustrated special subjects, as Schoolcraft, in aboriginal history and ethnology. Goodrich in popular education, and Walsh and Buckingham in editorial es- says; Theodore Sedgwick, Horace Mann, Hildreth, Benjamin, Choate, Kettell, Dr. Francis, Josiah Quincy, and G. L. Duyckink. 617. During the interval which has elapsed, "and notwithstand- ing a civil conflict of four years, unparalleled in history for pat- riotic self-devotion and the lavish sacrifice of life and treasure to reassert and vindicate forever the integrity of the nation, sev- eral new and important additions have been made to our cata- logue of able and honored authors and of standard works in native literature. John Lothrop Motley has gained a European reputation by his History of the Dutch Republic and of the Netherlands works of elaborate research and artistic finish, written with an earnest sympathy in the struggles of those who laid the foundations of civil and religious freedom, and with a force and grace of style both appropriate and attractive. A val- uable addition to this department also is the History of jJVew England, by John Gorham Palfrey, wherein is evident much original research and a more comprehensive and vivid treatment than had before been given to the subject. In the sphere of philology and economical science, George P. Marsh has written with erudition and efficiency : his History and Origin of the English Language, his Lectures on the English Language, and his treatise entitled Man and Nature, have been recognized as singularly able and suggestive works on both sides of the ocean. In popular biography James Parton has won deserved distinction by the thoroughness of his investigation, and the dramatic form of his delineation ; his lives of Burr, Jackson, and Franklin are read and relished by thousands. William R. Alger's His- tory of the Doctrine of a Future Life, is the most complete, cu- rious, and interesting work of its kind which has appeared in our country. Robert S. Lowell has published a local romance of freshness and picturesque attraction, and several expressive poems; Edward S. Rand, Jr., a pleasant and useful series of horticultural works ; John Milton Mackie, two or three sprightly and graceful books of travel ; and the lamented Dr. Kane, a most successful narrative of his arctic adventures. One of the most individual of the American authors who have become known to NOTE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. 365 fame since the preceding record was written, is Henry D. Tho- reau. intimately known and highly esteemed by a few near neighbors and friends during his life, including Emerson and Hawthorne. It is only since his death, which occurred May 7, 1862, that his peculiar traits have been generally recognized throu'gh his writings. He aspired to a life of frugal indepen- dence and moral isolation, and carried out the desire with sin- gular heroism and patience. His experience as a hermit on the Concord River, his observant excursions to the woods of Maine, the sands of Cape Cod, and other native scenes, rarely explored by such curious and loving eyes, have a remarkable freshness of tone and fulness of detail; while on themes of a social and political nature his comments are those of a bold and ardent re- former. Few books possess a more genuine American scope and flavor than Thoreau's. G18. Gail Hamilton has become a household word in New England as the noni de plume of a trenchant and graphic female essayist; and Trowbridge has gained popularity as an American story-teller. J. G. Holland has proved one of the most success- ful of American authors, if pecuniary results and popularity may be regarded as the test. Long engaged in the editorial charge of a New England daily newspaper, and brought into intimate contact with the people, their tastes and wants seem to have been remarkably appreciated by this prolific literary pur- veyor thereto. He has written novels, poems, lectures, and es- says, founded on or directed to the wants and tendencies of life and nature in New England, and reflecting, with great authen- ticity, the local peculiarities, natural phases, and characteristic qualities of the region and the people. t!19. Although the war for the Union elicited many memora- ble utterances in the form of logical discussion, eloquent appeal and invective, graphic narration, and lyric pathos or power, perhaps it revealed no more interesting literary phenomena than the advent of a young writer of romance previously quite unappreciated. A vivid sketch which Theodore Winthrop wrote cf the march of the Seventh Regiment from New York to Bal- timore on the outbreak of the rebellion, first awakened public attention to his spirit and skill as a raconteur ; and when, a few months later, he gallantly laid down his young life for his coun- try, the writings which had vainly sought a publisher while he IJved were hailed by a host of sympathetic readers as the liter- 306 NOTE TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. ary legacy of a youthful martyr. This natural reaction from indifference to eulogy was not, however, a mere tribute to valor and fealty. The chivalrous nature and artistic sympathies of Major Winthrop, his love of adventure, his narrative skill, and a certain dramatic fire, are embodied and embalmed in these volumes of travel and romance in a manner full of high literary- promise and genuine personal interest. IOEX OF AUTHORS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. A. AcMison, Joseph, 199-203. Ml-A-iC, 20. M fric, another, 20. Akenside, Mark, 237. Alcuin, 22. Al.red, king, 19; his trans- lation of Bede, 19. Ancren Riwle, the, 23. Angles, 16. Anglo-Saxon, date of its change into English, 16. Anglo-Saxon language, n, 14. Anglo-Saxon poetry, the vernacular, 16. Anglo-Saxon prose, the vernacu ar, 19. Anglo-Saxons, n. Ansjlm, 29. Arbuthnot, Dr. John, 194. Ar.len. Isabella, mo.h.r of Sh ikspeare, 90. Armstrong, John, 240. Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 2< Ascham, Roger, 63. Asscr, Bishop. 21. AttL-rbury. Bishop, 204. Austen, Miss, 291. B. Bacon, Francis, 117-123. B icon. Rogsr, 29. B ildwin, Richard, 66. Bile, 79. Billads, 28, 249. B arbour, 52. 64. Barcl i.y, Alexander, 59. Barrow, Isaac, 176. Battle of Finnesbur.;, 17. Baxter, Richard, 136. Butler, Samuel, 148150. Beattie, James, 234. Byron, Lord, 258-263. Beaumont, 109. Beckford, William, 293. Bede, 17, 19, 21. c. B-ill, Currer. See Bronte. Bentham, Jeremy, 308. Bentley, Richard, 204. Csedmon, monk of Whit- by, 17. Beowulf, Lay of, 17. Camden, William, 124. Berkeley. Bishop, 206. Berners, Lord, 63. Campbell, Dr. George, 233. Campbell, Thomas, 272. Bible, English translation Canute, 24. o 5* Carew, Thomas, 127. Blackstone, Sir William, Carlyle, Thomas, 297. 233- Caxion, 58. Blackwood's Magazine, 305. Celtic dialect, 10. Blair, Robert, 234. Celtic writers, 19. Blind Harry, 64. Celts, 9-12.. Bolingbroke, Viscount, 205. Chapman, George, 74, 89. Borron, 29. Chntterton, Thomas, 242. Boswell, James, 228. Chaucer. Geoffr -v, 31-46. Bowles, Caroline, 274. Ch st.-rfielcl, E:edell, 314. Butler, W. A., 352. Cooper, Dr., 336. ieecher, Miss, 317. Byles, Dr., 343. Cooper, J. F., 312, 328, ieecher, H. W., 314. 337- Jelknap, 323. Cox, Cleveland 354. 'sllamy, 314. C. Coxe, 314. '.enjamin, 355. Cranch, 358. lenton, 321. Caldwell, Prof, 336. Croswell, 314. 'othune, 321. Calhoun, 319. CroswelL 354. !iddle, 323. Calvert, G. H., 335, 337. Curtis, George W., 337. jigelow, 337. bmney, Horace, 321. Campbell, Mrs., 356. Camther, 323. Cushir.g, 337. Cutler, 355. (370 372 INDEX TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. D. G. I. Dana, Richard H., 333, 336, 345- Gallagher, 353. Gal latin, A., 336. Irving, J. T., 323. Irving, M. P., 323. Davidsons, 355.. Gayerre, 323. Irving, W., 312, 330. Davies, 314. Gibbs, 323. Davis, 323. Dawes, 355. Gillespie, 337. Gilman, Mrs., 317. J. Dawson, Mrs., 356. Godfrey, T., 343. Day, Miss, 356. Dehon, 314. Godwin, 312. Goodrich, 333, 364. . ackson, 333. . acobs, Miss, 336. Delano, 337. Gould, Miss, 333. . ames, Henry, 334, 361. Dennie, 329. Gray, Mrs., 336. . ames, Miss, 356. Dewey : 314, 335- Dmnies, Mrs., 356. Green, 323. Green, Mrs., 336. . arvis, Dr., 314. . arvis, J. J., 361. Doane, 355. Dodd, Mrs., 356. Downing, A. J., 336. Drake, 323, 349. Greene, A. G., 332. Greenwood, 314. Greenwood, Grace, 317. Gregg, 337. . ay, 318. . eiferson, 319, 323. . ewett, 337. . ohnson, 312. Dunlap, 323. Griffin, 335. . udd, 341. Duyckinck, 334. . udson, 336. Dwight, J. S., 312, 335, 336. H. K. E. Hale, 314- Hale, S. J., Mrs., 317. Kendall, 337. Eames, Mrs., 356. Hall, James, 341. Kennedy, J. P., 323, 341. Eastburn, 353. Edwards, 313. Hall, Mrs., 317. Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 346. Kent, 321, 336. Key, F. S., 333. Eliot, Samuel, 326. Hamilton, Alexander, 318. Kimball, 333. Ellery, 353. Hamilton, Gail, 317. Kidder, 337. Ellett, Mrs., 317, 323. Elliot, 312. Hammond, 323. Hart, J. S., 333- King, 337- Kmney, Mrs., 336. Embury, Mrs., 317. Emerson, 312, 334, 361. Hawks, Dr., 314. Hawthorne, N., 340, 341. Kip, 323,. 337. Kirkland, Mrs., 317. Esling, Mrs., 356. Everett, A. H., 321, 333, 336. Headley, 337. Hedge, 314, 335- Henry, Patrick, 318. Knapp, 323. Knox, 314. Everett, Edward, 321, 362. Henry, Prof., 336. Ii. Hewitt, Mrs., 333. Higginson, 361. Lanman, 337. F. Hildreth, 326. Larcom, Miss., 336. Hill, 353. Lawrence, 333. Fail-field, 333. Farrar, Mrs., 317. Hillard, 321. Hillhouse, 343. Lee, Miss E., 336. Lee, Miss M. E., 356. Fay, 341. Hirst, 353. Lee, Mrs., 317, 323. Fay, T. S., 336. Hitchcock, S., 363. Legare, Hugh S., 320. Fields, 335. Hoffman, 312, 337, 330. Leggett, 355. Fisk, 337. Flint, 323. Holmes, 323. Holmes, O. W., 312, 330. Leslie, Miss, 317. Lewis and Clark, 336. Flint, Timothy, 341. Honeywood, 343. Lewis, Mrs., 336. Follen, Mrs., 336. Forrester, Fanny, 317. Hooker, 314. Hooper, Lucy, 336. Little, Mrs., 336. Long, 337- Fox, George, 314. Francis, Dr., 321, 364. Franklin, 312. Hopkins, 312, 314. Hopkinson, Judge, 335. Hosmer, 353. Longfellow, 333, 337. 35< 361. Lord, 333. Fremont, 337. Freneau, P. 343. Howe, Julia W., 317. Howell, 361. Lossing, B. J., 326. Loud, Mrs., 356. Frisbie, Prof., 336, 352. Frothingham, 314, 323. Fuller, S. M., 333. Fuller, Miss, 356. Hoyt, 353. Hudson, H. N., 314, 332. Humphreys, 343. Huntington, 353. Lowell, J. R., 333, 332, Lowell, Mrs., 336. Lowell, R., 333. Lowell, R. S., 364. Furnecs, 314. Hutchinson, Anne, 314. Lyman, 337. INDEX TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. Lynch, 337. Lynch, Miss, 355. Osgood, Mrs., 355. Osgood, S., 314, 323- Otis, 318. Sargent, Epes, 355. Sawyer, Mrs., 356. Saxe, 335, 361. Schoolcraft, 336. M. P. Sedgwick, Cath. M., 317. Macey, 323. Mackenzie, 323, 337. Paine, R. T., 344. Palfrey, J. G., 336, 361. Sewell, 323. Scott, Mrs., 356. Shaler, 337. Mann, Horace, 364. Marmette, 323. Marsh, G. P., 364. Palmer, 352. Parker, Theo., 362. Parkman, 328, 337. Shelton, 314. Sherburne, 323^ Sigourney, Lydia H., 317. Marshall, 323. Mather, Increase and Cot- Parsons, Dr., 335, 352. Parton, 323, 364. Silliman, 337. Simms, W. Gilmore, 323, ton, 312, 343. Matthews, 355. Matthews, Cornelius, 335. May, Caroline, 356. Pauldmg, 341. Payson, 314. Peabody, 314. Percival, J. G., 347. 341- Smith, 323. Smith, "Mrs. Emeline, 356. Smith, Mrs. E. Oakes, 317. May, Edith, 356. Mayer, 323. Phillips, Miss, 356. Pickering, 336. Smith, Seba, 355. Smith, Mrs. T. P., 356. May hew, 312. Mayo, 342, 356. M'Connell, 341. Pickett, 323. Pierpont, J., 345. Pierson, Mrs., 356. Snelling, 355. Sparks, 323. Spencer, 314, 337. M' Donald, Mrs., 356. Melntosh, Miss, 317. Pike, A., 355. Pinckney, 318, 352. Sprague, 321, 323. Sprague, Charles, 346. Meet:., 355. Pindar, Miss S., 356. Sproat, Mrs., 356. M .,len, 355- Pinkney, 352. Squier, 337. '.ielville, 337. Pise, 363. Stephens, 323, 336. Middleton, 336. Poe, E. A., 341. Stephens, Mrs., 356. Miller, 355. Potter, 314. Stetson, 314. Minor, 323. Prentiss, 321. Stiles, 312. Minot, 323. Mitchell, Donald G., 337, Prescott, Miss, 317. Prescott, W. H., 326. Stith, 323. Stowe, Mrs., 317. 360. Preston, 321. Stuart, 314. Mitchell, Dr., 335. Proud, 323. Story, 321, 361. Moore, C. C., 355, 363. Street, Alfred B., 353, 364 Morris, G. P., 355. Q, Steadman, 355. Morris, Gouverneur, 318. St. John, Mrs., 356. Morton, 323. Quincy, 323. Stoddard, 355. Motley, 364. Stone, 323. Moultrie, 323. B. Sullivan, 323. Mowatt, Mrs., 356. Sumner, 321. Mumford, W., 344- Murray, 314. Raguet, 336. Ralph, 341. Ramsay, David, 324. T. Rand, Ed. S., 364. B", Randolph, 321. Taggart, Miss, 356. Raymond, 336. Tappan, 314. Neal, John, 341. Neal, J. C, 335- Neal, Mrs. 317, 336. Read, 355. Reed, 333. Ripley, G., 335- Taylor, 337. Taylor, B., 354, 361. Thacher, 355. Newell, 353. Robbms, Eliza, 317. Thatcher, 323. Newman, 312. Robinson, 314, 337, 363. Thomas, 323, 341. Nichols, Mrs., 335, 356. Noble, 355. Rockwell, 355. Ruschenberger, 337. Thompson, 323. Thoreau, 365. Norman, 337. Rush, Dr., 336. Thorpe, 335. Norton, A., 333, 355- Rutledge, 318. Thurston, Mrs., 356. Nourse, J. D., 336. Ticknor, G., 334. S. Todd, 3 i4. ! lownsend, 337. 0. Trumbull, 323, 343. Sabine, 323. Tucker, 323, 336. O'Callahan, 323. Sands, R. C, 336. Tudor, 323. - - Oliver, Mrs., 356. Sanford, 355. Tyng, 314, 874 INDEX TO AMERICAN LITERATURE. IT. Ware, Mrs., 356. Willard, Mrs., 317. W?jz, William, 341. Williams, 314. Upham, 323, 363. W*ren, 318. Williams, 323. Watson, 323. Williams, Roger, 314, 343 Wayland, 321, 334, 336. Willis, N.,P.r 33 5,3?o. 343 V. Webber, 337. Wilson, 336. Webster, Daniel, 312, 320. Winslow, 336. Verplanck, 320. Webster, Noah, 336. Winthrop, 321, 323. Very, 355. Welby, Mrs., 355. Winthrop, Theo., 365. Wells, Mrs., 356. Wirt, Wm., 320, 323, 336. Wetherell, Miss, 317. Wise, 337. w. Wheaton, 323, 328. Witherspoon, 312. Wakefield, Mrs., 356. Whipple, 321. Whipple, E. P., 333- Woodman, Miss, 356. Woods, 314. Walker, James, 334. White. Bishop, 314, 323. Woodworth, 352. Wallace, 3 55- Whitefield, 314. Worthington, Mrs., 3561 Wai is, 337- Walsh, R. 336. Whitman, 314. Whitman, Mrs., 355. Wynne, 323. Walter, 355. Whittier, John G., 323,354. Ward, ^55- Wilcox, Carlos, 355. Y. Ward, Mrs., 356. Wilde, R. H., 333. Ware, Henry, 352. Wilkes, 337. Young, 323. . x jjui UJN Tjuuti .LAST JJAT.E STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY levolu OVERDUE. OCT 29 1935 MAB 14 IN STACKS 619S9 O5 ";d to the mbraces j stration. > "accuracy ; admira- ' ~is, which | .ms, have j -nsion of j Collecting I _re a suffi- series of the youth i "ice. YB 14190 77SSS4 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Stoddard's Series of Mathematical Text-Books have many fea- tures which justify the high estimation in which they are held by teachers. The use of these books induces careful attention and continuous application of the mind, at the same time relieving study of its usual irksomeness, by such lucid explanations and a proper presentation of the subjects as make them apprehended easily by scholars. Any of the above sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price. Sheldon & Company's Text-'Boofcs. ^ r ~ STODDARD'S FULL MATHEMATICAL SERIES EMBRACES THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: Stoddard's Pi" 30 Stodd 25 St _ 5O St ~ o jLvu-u-iuients of Arithmetic 5O Stoddard's Combination School Arithmetic 80 Stoddard's New Practical Arithmetic 1 00 | Stoddard's Complete Arithmetic 1 25 j " I have again examinee! ' Stoddard's Complete Arithmetic,' and find my first impressions of its merits fully confirmed. If I were called upon to recommend an Arithmetic for general use in oar schools, I should unhesitatingly recom- mend ' Stoddard's Complete Arithmetic.' "Prof. OLNEY, of Michigan Uni-