Chapter IX: The Age of Transition (1)

TIME-CHART OF THE CHIEF AUTHORS

_The thick line shows the period of active literary work._

1720 1730 1740 1750 1760 1770 1780 1790 1800
| | | | | | | | |
| |║[162] | ║ | | | | | |
Thomson |........|║==============║ | | | | | |
(1700–48) | | | | | | | | |
| ║ | | ║ | ║ | | | | |
Collins | ║......|........|.....║=========║ | | | | |
(1721–59) | | | | | | | | |
| | | ║ |║[163] ║| |║ | | |
Gray |........|........|...║============║|........|║ | | |
(1716–71) | | | |║ | | | | |
| |║ | | | | |║ | ║
Cowper | |║.......|........|........|........|........|║=================║
(1731–1800) | | | | | | | | |
| | | | ║ | | | ║[164]| ║ |
Burns | | | | ║.|........|........|...║=========║ |
(1759–96) | | | | | | | | |
| | |║[165] | ║ |║ | | | |
Richardson |........|........|║==========║.....|║ | | | |
(1689–1761) | | | | | | | | |
| | | ║ ║ |[166]║ | | | | |
Fielding |........|........|.║====║=======║ | | | | |
(1707–54) | | | ║ | | | | | |
| | ║ | | | | |║ ║ | |
Johnson |........|....║========================================║..║ | |
(1709–84) | | | | | | | | |
| ║ | | | ║ | | ║ | | |
Goldsmith | ║....|........|........|......║============║ | | |
(1728–74) | | | | | | | | |
| | ║ | | | | ║[167]| |║ ║ |
Gibbon | | ║....|........|........|........|...║==============║..║ |
(1737–94) | | | | | | | | |
| ║| | | ║ | | | | ║ |
Burke | ║|........|........|....║===================================║ |
(1729–97) | | | | | | | | |

THE TRANSITION IN POETRY

The following table is meant to convey a rough idea of the drift of poetry toward Romanticism. In the table the lateral position of the title of a work gives an approximate estimate of its approach to the Romantic ideal. Such an estimate, especially in the case of the transitional poems, cannot be determined absolutely, and need not be taken as final. The table, nevertheless, reveals not only the steady drift, but also the manner in which the different stages of development overlap.

+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| DATE | CLASSICAL | TRANSITIONAL | ROMANTIC |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | | |
| | | | |
| 1730 | _The Dunciad_ | _The Seasons_ |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | | |
| | _Epistle to Arbuthnot_ | | |
| 1740 | _London_ | | |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | _Night Thoughts_ | |
| | | | |
| 1750 | _Vanity of Human Wishes_ | Collins’s _Odes_ | _The Castle of Indolence_ |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | Gray’s _Elegy_ | |
| | | | |
| 1760 | | | |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | | _Ossian_ |
| | | _The Traveller_ | |
| 1770 | | | Chatterton’s poems |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | _The Deserted Village_ |
| | | | |
| 1780 | | | |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+
| | | _The Village_ | |
| | | | _The Task_ Burns’s poems |
| 1790 | | | Blake’s poems |
+------+--------------------------+------------------+---------------------------+

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (1740–1800)

The period covered by the present chapter is that of the middle and later stages of the eighteenth century. During this time several relevant historical movements call for notice.

=1. Decline of the Party Feud.= The contest between the Whigs and the Tories still continues, but it is hardly of the previous bitterness. The chief reason for this change is found in the weakness of the Tory party, which by rash management and precipitate action made itself so unpopular that for nearly thirty years--those in the middle of the century--the Whigs had hardly any opposition. With the accession of George III in 1760 the Tories swiftly climbed into power, and, with the shadow of the French Revolution already looming up, party feeling soon acquired additional ferocity.

=2. Commercial and Imperial Expansion.= Under the pacific management of the great Whig minister Walpole, and owing to the successful wars of his successors, the eighteenth century saw an immense growth in the wealth and importance of the British Empire. On literature this material welfare had its effect by endowing and stimulating research and original work. The possession of India and America in itself was an inspiration, and when the new territories brought new burdens, like that of the American revolt, the clash of ideals led to fresh literary effort, as can easily be seen in the work of Burke.

=3. The French Revolution.= Long before it burst, the storm of the Revolution was, in the words of Burke, blackening the horizon. During the century new ideas were germinating; new forces were gathering strength; and the Revolution, when it did come in 1789, was only the climax to a long and deeply diffused unrest. Revolutionary ideas stirred literature to the very depths; the present chapter, and the next as well, are a chronicle of their effects upon the literature of England.

THE AGE OF TRANSITION

Like all other periods of transition, the one under review is disturbed and confused. It is a matter of great difficulty to trace the different tendencies, but with care the task may be accomplished with some accuracy.

=1. The Double Tendency.= Two movements can be clearly observed in the writing of the time, namely:

(_a_) The allegiance to the old order of classicism. In this movement the chief and almost the only figure is that of Samuel Johnson. He is a host in himself, however.

(_b_) The search after the new order of Romanticism. In their different degrees, as can be seen from the second table at the beginning of this chapter, many writers were engaged in the search. It began as early as 1730, with the publication of Thomson’s _Seasons_; and though it lapsed for a time, it was to continue with gathering force during the latter years of the century.

=2. The New Romanticism.= The general features of the Romantic movement were:

(_a_) A return to nature--to the real nature of earth and air, and not to the stuffy, bookish nature of the artificial pastoral.

(_b_) A fresh interest in man’s position in the world of nature. This led to great activity in religious and political speculation, as will be seen further on.

(_c_) An enlightened sympathy for the poor and oppressed. In English literature during this time one has but to think of the work of Cowper, Burns, and Crabbe, and even of the classically minded Gray, to perceive the revolution that is taking place in the minds of men.

(_d_) A revolt against the conventional literary technique, such as that of the heroic couplet. On the other hand, we have a desire for strength, simplicity, and sincerity in the expression of the new literary ideals.

(_e_) Fresh treatment of Romantic themes in such poems as _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _The Ancient Mariner_, _La Belle Dame sans Merci_.

In the present chapter we shall perceive all the above features dimly taking shape. In the next chapter they will be the dominating features of the era.

=3. The New Learning.= The middle and later stages of the eighteenth century show a minor Renaissance that touched nearly all Europe. The increase in wealth and comfort coincided with a general uplifting of the standard of the human intellect. In France particularly it was well marked, and it took for its sign and seal the labors of the Encyclopædists and the social amenities of the older _salons_. Many of the leading English writers, including Gibbon, Hume, and Sterne, visited Paris, which was the hub of European culture.

In England the new learning took several channels. In literature we have the revival of the Romantic movement, leading to (_a_) research into archaic literary forms, such as the ballad, and (_b_) new editions of the older authors, such as Shakespeare and Chaucer. The publication of Bishop Percy’s _Reliques_ (1765) which contained some of the oldest and most beautiful specimens of ballad-literature, is a landmark in the history of the Romantic movement. Even Pope and Johnson were moved to edit Shakespeare, though they did it badly. The editions of Theobald and Warburton were examples of scholarly and enlightened research.

=4. The New Philosophy.= The spirit of the new thinking, which received its consummate expression in the works of Voltaire, was marked by keen skepticism and the zest for eager inquiry. Scotland very early took to it, the leading Scottish philosopher being Hume. It would seem, perhaps, that this destructive spirit of disbelief would injure the Romantic ideal, which delights in illusion. But finally the new spirit actually assisted the Romantic ideal by demolishing and clearing away heaps of the ancient mental lumber, and so leaving the ground clear for new and fresher creations.

=5. The Growth of Historical Research.= History appears late in our literature, for it presupposes a long apprenticeship of research and meditation. The eighteenth century witnessed the swift rise of historical literature to a place of great importance. Like so many other things we have mentioned, it was fostered in France, and it touched Scotland first. The historical school had a glorious leader in Gibbon, who was nearly as much at home in the French language as he was in English.

=6. The New Realism.= At first, as might be expected, the spirit of inquiry led to the suppression of romance; but it drew within the circle of literary endeavor all the ranks of mankind. Thus we have the astonishing development of the novel, which at first concerned itself with domestic incidents. Fielding and his kind dealt very faithfully with human life, and often were squalidly immersed in masses of sordid detail. In the widest sense of the word, however, the novelists were Romanticists, for in sympathy and freshness of treatment they were followers of the new ideal.

=7. The Decline of Political Writing.= With the partial decay of the party spirit the activity in pamphleteering was over; poets and satirists were no longer the favorites of Prime Ministers. Walpole, the greatest of contemporary ministers, openly despised the literary breed, for he did not need them. Hence writers had to depend on their public, which was not entirely an evil. This caused the rise of the man of letters, such as Johnson and Goldsmith, who wrote to satisfy a public demand. Later in the century, when the political temperature once again approached boiling-point, pamphlets began again to acquire an importance, which rose to a climax in the works of Junius and Burke.

SAMUEL JOHNSON (1709–84)

=1. His Life.= Johnson has a faithful chronicler in Boswell, whose _Life of Johnson_ makes us intimate with its subject to a degree rare in literature. But even the prying zeal of Boswell could not extort many facts regarding the great man’s early life. Johnson was born at Lichfield, the son of a bookseller, whose pronounced Tory views he inherited and steadfastly maintained. From his birth he was afflicted with a malignant skin-disease (for which he was unsuccessfully “touched” by Queen Anne) which all through his life affected his sight and hearing, and caused many of the physical peculiarities that astonished and amused the friends of his later years. After being privately educated, he proceeded to Oxford, where he experienced the miseries and indignities that are the lot of a poor scholar cursed with a powerful and aspiring mind. Leaving the university, he tried school-teaching, with no success; married a woman twenty years older than himself; and then in 1737 went to London and threw himself into the squalors and allurements of Grub Street.

In his _Essay on Johnson_ Macaulay has given an arresting description of the miseries endured by the denizens of Grub Street; and in this case even the natural exaggeration of Macaulay is not quite misplaced. We know next to nothing regarding the life of Johnson during this early period. It is certain that it was wretched enough to cause the sturdy old fellow, in after years, to glance at this period of his life with a shudder of loathing, and to quench the curiosity of Boswell with ultra-Johnsonian vehemence. Very slowly he won his way out of the gutter, fighting every step with bitter tenacity; for, as he puts it in his poem of _London_, with all the outstanding emphasis of capitals, SLOW RISES WORTH BY POVERTY OPPRESSED. From the obscure position of a publisher’s hack he became a poet of some note by the publication of _London_ (1738), which was noticed by Pope; his _Dictionary_ (1747–55) advanced his fame; then somewhat incomprehensibly he appears in the limelight as one of the literary dictators of London, surrounded by a circle of brilliant men. In 1762 he received a pension from the State, and the last twenty years of his life were passed in the manner most acceptable to him: dawdling, visiting, conversing, yet _living_ with a gigantic vitality that made his fellows wonder.

It is in these latter years that we find him imperishably figured in the pages of Boswell. All his tricks of humor--his bearishness, his gruff goodwill, his silent and secret benevolences; his physical aberrations--his guzzlings, his grunts, his grimaces, his puffings and wallowings; his puerile superstitions; his deep and beautiful piety; his Tory prejudices, so often enormously vocal; his masterful and unsleeping common sense; the devouring immensity of his conversational powers: we find all these set out in _The Life of Doctor Johnson_.

=2. His Poetry.= He wrote little poetry, and none of it, though it has much merit, can be called first-class. His first poem, _London_ (1738), written in the heroic couplet, is of great and somber power. It depicts the vanities and the sins of city life viewed from the depressing standpoint of an embittered and penurious poet. His only other longish poem is _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ (1749). The poem, in imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal, transfers to the activities of mankind in general the gloomy convictions raised ten years earlier by the spectacle of London. The meter is the same as in _London_, and there is the same bleak pessimism, but the weight and power of the emotion, the tremendous conviction and the stern immobility of the author, give the work a great value. There are many individual lines of solemn grandeur. The following passage shows all he has to offer to the young aspirant to literary fame:

When first the college rolls receive his name,
The young enthusiast quits his ease for fame;
Resistless burns the fever of renown,
Caught from the strong contagion of the gown.
O’er Bodley’s dome his future labours spread,
And Bacon’s mansion trembles o’er his head.
Are these thy views? Proceed, illustrious youth,
And Virtue guard thee to the throne of Truth!
Yet, should thy soul indulge the generous heat
Till captive Science yields her last retreat;
Should Reason guide thee with her brightest ray,
And pour on misty Doubt resistless day;
Should no false kindness lure to loose delight,
Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright;
Should tempting Novelty thy cell refrain,
And Sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain;
Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
Nor claim the triumph of a letter’d heart;
Should no disease thy torpid veins invade,
Nor Melancholy’s phantoms haunt thy shade;
Yet hope not life from grief or danger free,
Nor think the doom of man revers’d for thee:
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from letters, to be wise;
There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail.
See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just,
To buried merit raise the tardy bust.
If dreams yet flatter, once again attend,
Hear Lydiat’s life and Galileo’s end.

=3. His Drama.= When he first came to London in 1737 he brought the manuscript, in part, of _Irene_, a solemn and ponderous tragedy. In 1749, through the heroic exertions of his old pupil David Garrick, who was then manager of Drury Lane Theatre, it was given a hearing, and had a run of nine nights. Even Johnson’s best friends had to admit that it was no success, and it then utterly disappeared, taking with it Johnson’s sole claim to dramatic merit.

=4. His Prose.= Any claim that Johnson has to be called a first-rate writer must be based on the merit of his prose; but even his prose is small in bulk and strangely unsatisfying in kind. His earliest effort was contributed to Cave’s _Gentleman’s Magazine_, and comprised Parliamentary reporting, in which he fabricated the speeches of the legislators, to the great benefit of the legislators. Various hack-work followed; and then in 1747 he planned, and in eight years produced, his _Dictionary_. He also wrote _The Rambler_ (1750–52) and _The Idler_ (1758–60), which were periodicals in the manner of _The Spectator_, without the ease and variety of their original. To these he regularly contributed essays, which were quite popular in their day, though to modern notions they would be the reverse of acceptable. They treat mainly of abstract subjects, and are expressed in an extremely cumbrous style which soon came to be known as Johnsonese. This type of prose style is marked by a Latinized vocabulary, long and balanced sentences, and an abstract mode of expression. The passage given below illustrates these mannerisms, as well as a kind of elephantine skittishness with which Johnson was sometimes afflicted:

Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers
in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion,
with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of
the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well
known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid
vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer, than
that he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more
space by every circumrotation than another that grovels upon
the ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are known to
be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living
at the utmost length of the earth’s diameter, they are carried
about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed
nearer to the poles; and therefore, as it becomes a wise man
to struggle with the inconveniences of his country, whenever
celerity and acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our
languor by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret.
_The Rambler_

He wrote _Rasselas_ (1759) in order to pay for his mother’s funeral. It was meant to be a philosophical novel, but it is really a number of _Rambler_ essays, written in Johnsonese, and strung together with the personality of an inquiring young prince called Rasselas. It is hardly a novel at all; the tale carries little interest, the characters are rudimentary, and there are many long, dull discussions. In the book, however, there are abundant shrewd comments and much of Johnson’s somber clarity of vision.

His later years were almost unproductive of literary work. Yet he kept himself deeply interested in the events of the day. For instance, he started a violent quarrel with Macpherson, whose _Ossian_ had startled the literary world. We give a letter that Johnson wrote to the Scotsman, which shows that he sometimes wrote as he spoke--crisply, clearly, and scathingly:

MR JAMES MACPHERSON,
I have received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence
offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do
for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be
deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a
ruffian.

What would you have me retract? I thought your book an
imposture: I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I
have given my reasons to the public, which I here dare you to
refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer, are
not so formidable; and what I hear of your morals inclines me
to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall
prove. You may print this if you will.
SAM. JOHNSON

His _Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland_ (1774), a travel book, shows the faculty of narrative, and contains passages of great skill. His last work of any consequence was _The Lives of the Poets_ (1779–81), a series of prefaces to a collection of poetical works. They are the best specimens of Johnson’s criticism, which is virile and sagacious, though it is influenced by the emotions of the classical school of Pope.

Thus when we come to estimate the value of his work we must arrive at the conclusion that the towering eminence which he held among really able men was due rather to the personality of the man than to the outstanding genius of the writer. Moreover, it is important to observe that he founded no school and left no literary following. He is the last of the old generation.

JAMES THOMSON (1700–48)

Thomson can hardly be called a great poet, yet in the history of literature he is unusual enough to be regarded (chronologically) as a freak. As such he is important, and it is necessary to give him some prominence.

=1. His Life.= Born near Kelso, close to some of the loveliest valleys on the Scottish side of the Border, Thomson early came to London (1725) to seek a patron and fame. His _Winter_ (1726), though its novelty embarrassed the critics, brought him recognition and afterward praise; he obtained the patronage of the great, and assiduously cultivated it; traveled as a tutor to a noble family; obtained Government places and emoluments; and passed a happy and prosperous life at his cottage near Richmond.

=2. His Poetry.= His _Winter_ was afterward quadrupled in size by including the other three seasons, and became _The Seasons_ (1730). It is a blank-verse poem, and consists of a long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes, mainly those with which he was familiar during his youth on the Scottish Border. There is a great deal of padding, and the style is often marked by clumsy expressions; yet on the whole the treatment is exhilarating, full of concentrated observation and joy in the face of nature. Above all, it is real nature, obtained from the living sky and air, and not from books; and, coming when it did, the poem exerted a strong counter-influence against the artificial school of poetry.

Thomson also wrote _Liberty_ (1736), a gigantic poem in blank verse, intolerably dull. It had no success. As Johnson says, “The praises of Liberty were condemned to harbour spiders, and to gather dust.”

In the last year of his life he published _The Castle of Indolence_, which is even more remarkable than _The Seasons_. The poem is written in Spenserian stanzas, and in the true Spenserian fashion it gives a description of a lotus-land into which world-weary souls are invited to withdraw. The work is imitative, and so cannot claim to be of the highest class, but it is an imitation of the rarest merit. For languid suggestiveness, in dulcet and harmonious versification, and for subtly woven vowel-music it need not shirk comparison with the best of Spenser himself. We give three verses of this remarkable poem. Coming at such a period, and expressing as they do the essence of romantic idealism, the verses are well worth quoting:

Full in the passage of the vale above,
A sable, silent, solemn forest stood,
Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idlesse fancied in her dreaming mood;
And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, aye waving to and fro,
Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;
And where this valley winded out below,
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was,
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky:
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh;
But whate’er smacked of noyance or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest.

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills,
Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale:
And now and then sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.
_The Castle of Indolence_

Thomson also wrote some dramas, including one bad tragedy, _Sophanisba_ (1729); and in collaboration with Mallet he produced the masque _Alfred_ (1740), which happens to contain the song _Rule, Britannia_. The song is usually said to be Thomson’s.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728–74)

As another typical example of the transition poet we take Goldsmith, whose work was produced a full generation after that of Thomson.

=1. His Life.= Much of Goldsmith’s early life is obscure, and our knowledge of it rests upon his own unsupported and hardly reliable evidence. He was born at Pallas, a small village in County Longford, in Ireland, and he was the son of the poor but admirable curate of the village. His father, the village, and various local features are duly registered, and unduly idealized, in the poem _The Deserted Village_. In 1745 Goldsmith proceeded to Trinity College, Dublin; graduated, after some misadventures; and then tried various careers in turn--law, medicine, and playing the flute--at various places, including Dublin, Edinburgh, Leyden, Venice, and Padua. At the last-mentioned place he graduated, according to his own account, as a doctor, and claimed title as such. In truth, a settled career was beyond Goldsmith’s capacity. He had all the amiable vices of the stage Irishman: he was shiftless and improvident, but generous and humane; unstable and pitifully puerile in mind, but with bright, piercing flashes of humor and insight. During his years of wandering he roved over Europe, playing the flute for a living; then in 1756 he returned to England, poor, unknown, but undaunted.

Then followed desperate attempts at making a living. In succession he was chemist, printer’s reader, usher in a school, and finally (the last refuge of the literary down-at-heels) publisher’s hack and a denizen of Grub Street. In time, however, by their sheer merit, his writings drew upon him the regard of famous persons, including Dr. Johnson and Charles James Fox, the eminent politician. Once recognition came, it came with a rush; money and praise poured in; but his feckless habits kept him poor, and he drifted about in mean London lodgings till his death in 1774. It was said that he brought his doom upon himself by prescribing for his own ailment. He left debts for two thousand pounds. During his latter years he was a member of Johnson’s famous club, where his artless ways--his bickerings, witticisms, and infantile vanity--were the cause of the mingled amusement, admiration, and contempt of his fellow-members.

=2. His Poetry.= Though his poetical production is not large, it is notable. His first poem, _The Traveller_ (1764), deals with his wanderings through Europe. The poem, about four hundred lines in length, is written in the heroic couplet, and is a series of descriptions and criticisms of the places and peoples of which he had experience. The descriptions, though often superficial and half-informed, are fired with the genius of the man, and are arresting and noteworthy. His critical comments, which require on his part clear thinking and some knowledge of social and economic facts, are of hardly any value. Similar drawbacks are seen in his only other poem of any length, _The Deserted Village_ (1770). In this poem, as he deals with the memories of his youth, the pathetic note is more freely expressed. His natural descriptions have charm and genuine feeling; but his remedies for the agricultural depression of Ireland are innocently empty of the slightest practical value.

The peculiar humor and pathos of Goldsmith are hard to analyze. Both emotions arise for simple situations, and are natural and free from any deep guile, yet they have a certain agreeable tartness of flavor, and show that Goldsmith was no fool in his observation of mankind. Often the humor is so dashed with pathos that the combined effect is attractive to a very high degree. The passage given below illustrates his artless emotion naturally expressed:

In all my wanderings round this world of care,
In all my griefs--and God has given my share--
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;
To husband out life’s taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose:
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,
Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,--
Around my fire an evening group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;
And as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return--and die at home at last.
_The Deserted Village_

Goldsmith’s miscellaneous poems are important, for they include some of his characteristic humorous and pathetic writing. The ballad called _The Hermit_ is done in the sentimental fashion, the witty _Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog_ is suggestive of Swift without Swift’s savage barb, and the fine lines beginning “When lovely woman stoops to folly” are among the best he ever wrote.

=3. His Drama.= Goldsmith wrote two prose comedies, both of which rank high among their class. The first, called _The Good-natured Man_ (1768), is not so good as the second, _She Stoops to Conquer_ (1773). Each, but especially the latter, is endowed with an ingenious and lively plot, a caste of excellent characters, and a vivacious and delightful style. Based on the Restoration comedy, they lack the Restoration grossness. The second play had an immense popularity, and even yet it is sometimes staged.

=4. His Prose.= The prose is of astonishing range and volume. Among his works of fiction we find _The Citizen of the World_ (1759), a series of imaginary letters from a Chinaman, whose comments on English society are both simple and shrewd. This series was contributed to _The Public Ledger_, a popular magazine. He wrote many other essays in the manner of Addison, almost as well done as those of Addison. His other important work of fiction is his novel _The Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), which is in the first rank of the eighteenth-century novels. The plot of the novel is simple, but fairly well handled, the characters are human and attractive, and the book has all the Goldsmith qualities of humor and pathos.

We give an example of his style. The passage is taken from one of his essays, in which he sketches the character of a man who, while he pretends to be hard-hearted, is in reality of a generous disposition. The humor is typical; it is artless, but it is acute and pervading, and shows us quite plainly that the writer was by no means the zany that Boswell (who disliked Goldsmith) desired us to imagine in his _Life of Johnson_.

He was proceeding in this strain, earnestly to dissuade me from
an imprudence of which I am seldom guilty, when an old man, who
still had about him the remnants of tattered finery, implored
our compassion. He assured us that he was no common beggar,
but forced into the shameful profession, to support a dying
wife, and five hungry children. Being prepossessed against such
falsehoods, his story had not the least influence upon me; but
it was quite otherwise with the man in black; I could see it
visibly operate upon his countenance, and effectually interrupt
his harangue. I could easily perceive that his heart burned to
relieve the five starving children, but he seemed ashamed to
discover his weakness to me. While he thus hesitated between
compassion and pride, I pretended to look another way, and he
seized the opportunity of giving the poor petitioner a piece of
silver, bidding him at the same time, in order that I should
hear, go work for his bread, and not tease passengers with such
impertinent falsehoods for the future.
_The Bee_

In addition, Goldsmith produced a great mass of hack-work, most of which is worthless as historical and scientific fact, but all of which is enlightened with the grace of his style and personality. Some of these works are _An Inquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_ (1759), his first published book; _The History of England_ (1762); and _The History of Earth and Animated Nature_, a kind of text-book on natural history, which was unfinished when he died.

=5. Summary.= Goldsmith’s work is so varied and important that it is necessary to summarize briefly. The following are its main features:

(_a_) _Variety._ In his projected Latin epitaph on Goldsmith, Johnson gives prominence to the statement that Goldsmith touched on nearly every type of writing and adorned them all:

Qui nullum fere scribendi genus
Non tetigit,
Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.

(_b_) Its _high quality_ is also apparent. In matters of knowledge Goldsmith was deficient, but in grace, charm, and amiable good-humor he is in the first flight of our writers.

(_c_) As a _transitional poet_ he is worthy of careful observation. In the mechanics of poetry--such as meter, rhyme, and rhetorical devices--he follows the older tradition; but in his broad humanity of outlook, in his sympathetic treatment of natural scenes, and in the simplicity of his humor and pathos he is of the coming age.

OTHER TRANSITIONAL POETS

=1. Thomas Gray (1716–71).= Gray was born in London, the son of a money-scrivener, a kind of lawyer, who was in affluent circumstances. Gray, however, owed his education largely to the self-denial of his mother; he was educated at Eton and Cambridge, at the latter of which places he met Horace Walpole. With Walpole he toured Italy; then, returning to the university, he took his degree, finally settling down to a life that was little more than an elegant futility. He was offered the Laureateship, but refused it (1757); he obtained a professorship at Cambridge, but he never lectured. He wrote a little, traveled a little; but he was a man of shrinking and fastidious tastes, unapt for the rough shocks of the world, and, fortunately for himself, able to withdraw beyond them.

His first poem was the _Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College_ (1747), which contained gloomy moralizings on the approaching fate of those “little victims,” the schoolboys. Then, after years of revision and excision, appeared the famous _Elegy written in a Country Churchyard_ (1751). This poem was smooth and graceful; it contained familiar sentiments turned into admirable, quotable phrases; and so, while it was agreeably familiar, it was fresh enough to be attractive. Its popularity has been maintained to the present day. His _Pindaric Odes_ (1757) were unsuccessful, being criticized for their obscurity. _The Bard_ and _The Progress of Poesy_, the two Pindaric Odes in the book, certainly require some elucidation, especially to readers not familiar with history and literature. At the first glance Gray’s odes are seen to have all the odic splendor of diction; in fact, the adornment is so thickly applied that it can almost stand alone, like a robe stiff with gems and gold lace. Yet the poems have energy and dignity. Johnson, who had a distaste for both the character and the work of Gray, cavils at the work, saying that it has a strutting dignity. “He is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible.”

The prose work of Gray is notable. It consists partly of letters written during his travels, describing the scenes he visits. In them he shows vigor of style, a sharp eye and a generous admiration for the real beauties of nature. His descriptions, such as those of the Lake District, are quite admirable, and well in advance of the general taste of his age.

In spite of its slender bulk, Gray’s achievement both in prose and verse is of great importance. He explored the origins of romance in the early Norse and Celtic legends; his sympathies with the poor and oppressed were genuine and emphatically expressed; and his treatment of nature was a great improvement upon that of his predecessors.

Johnson’s final estimate of Gray is not unfair, and we can leave the poet with it: “His mind had a large grasp; his curiosity was unlimited, and his judgment cultivated; he was likely to love much where he loved at all, but he was fastidious and hard to please.”

=2. William Collins (1721–59).= Collins was born at Chichester, and was educated at Winchester and Oxford, but all his life he was weighted with the curse of insanity, and for this reason he had to take untimely leave of the university. He tried to follow a literary career in London, but with scant success, being arrested for debt. He was released by the generosity of his publishers, and a fortunate legacy relieved him from the worst of his financial terrors. He lapsed into a mild species of melancholia, finally dying in his native city at the early age of thirty-eight.

The work of Collins is very small in bulk, and even of this scanty stock a fair proportion shows only mediocre ability. His _Persian Eclogues_ (1742) are in the conventional style of Pope, and though they profess to deal with Persian scenes and characters, the Oriental setting shows no special information or inspiration. The book that gives him his place in literature is his _Odes_ (1747), a small octavo volume of fifty-two pages. The work is a collection of odes to Pity, Fear, Simplicity, Patriotism, and kindred abstract subjects. Some of the odes are overweighted with the cumbrous creaking machinery of the Pindaric; but the best of them, especially the _Ode to Evening_ (done in unrhymed verse), are instinct with a sweet tenderness, a subdued and shadowy pathos, and a magical enchantment of phrase. In the same book two short elegies, one beginning “How sleep the brave” and the other on James Thomson (“In yonder grave a Druid lies”), are as captivating, with their misty lights and murmuring echoes of melancholy, as the best of Keats. In the finest work of Collins, with his eager and wistful searching, with what Johnson morosely called his “flights of imagination that pass the bounds of nature,” we are ushered over the threshold of romance.

=3. William Cowper (1731–1800).= Cowper was born at Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire, where his father was rector. He was to have been a barrister, and was actually called to the Bar (1754), but a great and morbid timidity of disposition, which increased till it became religious and suicidal mania, hampered him cruelly through life. Family influence obtained for him a good post on the clerical staff of the House of Lords, but his extreme shyness made him quite unfit for this semi-public appointment. The consequent disappointment disordered his wits, and he attempted suicide, but was fortunately prevented. The latter part of his life was spent chiefly at Olney, in Buckinghamshire, where his good friends the Unwins treated him with great kindness and good sense. His feeling of gratitude for their care, expressed or implicit in many of his poems and letters, is one of the most touching features in the literature of the time. This comparatively happy state of affairs did not last till the end, for the years immediately preceding his death were much clouded with extreme mental and bodily affliction.

Cowper’s poems were produced late in life, but in bulk the work is large. It is curiously mixed and attractive in its nature. His _Poems_ (1782) is his first attempt at authorship. The book contains little that is noteworthy. The bulk of it is taken up with a collection of set pieces in heroic couplets, quite in the usual manner, on such subjects as _The Progress of Error, Truth, Hope, and Charity_. At the very end of the volume a few miscellaneous short pieces are more encouraging as novelties. One of them is the well-known poem containing the reflections of Alexander Selkirk (“I am monarch of all I survey”). His next work is _The Task_ (1785), a long poem in blank verse, dealing with simple and familiar themes and containing many fine descriptions of country scenes. In places the style is marked by the prevailing artificial tricks, and as a whole the poem is seldom inspired with any deep or passionate feeling; but his observation is acute and humane, it includes the homeliest detail within its kindly scope, and he gives us real nature, like Thomson in _The Seasons_. At the end of this volume the ballad of _John Gilpin_ finds a place. It is an excellent example of Cowper’s prim but sprightly humor, an extraordinary gift for a man of his morbid temperament. Other short poems were added to later editions of his first volume. These include the _Epitaph on a Hare_, curiously and touchingly pathetic; lines _On the Receipt of my Mother’s Picture_, which reveal only too painfully the suppressed convulsions of grief and longing that were stirred within him by memories of the past; and _The Castaway_, written in a lucid interval just before the end, and sounding like the wail of a damned spirit. The poem gives a tragic finality to his life. It describes the doom of a poor wretch swept overboard in a storm, and concludes:

No poet wept him; but the page
Of narrative sincere,
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
Is wet with Anson’s tear;
And tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalise the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another’s case.

No voice divine the storm allay’d,
No light propitious shone,
When, snatch’d from all effectual aid,
We perished, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelm’d in deeper gulfs than he.

Cowper’s letters, private epistles addressed to various personal friends, are among the most delightful of their kind. They show the man at his best--almost jovial in a delicate fashion, keenly observant, and with a genuine gift for narrative. The style is so clear that the disposition of the writer shines through it with unruffled benignity.

Though Cowper comes late among the transition poets, he does not travel very far on the road to novelty. His mind is over-timorous, and he lacks robustness of temper. But in his feeling for nature, in the ease and versatility of his poetical work, in his undoubted lyrical gift (rarely expressed), his work marks an advance far beyond that of the classicists.

=4. George Crabbe (1754–1832).= Crabbe comes very late among the poets now under review, but in method he is largely of the eighteenth century. He was born in Suffolk, at Aldeburgh, where his father had been a schoolmaster and a collector of customs. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, but later left his native town to seek fame as an author in London (1780). He had little success at first, but gradually attracted attention. He fixed on a settled career by taking holy orders, and obtained the patronage of several influential men. Ultimately he obtained the valuable living of Trowbridge (1814), where he died as late as 1832, only a few months before Sir Walter Scott.

His chief poetical works are _The Library_ (1781), _The Village_ (1783), which made his name as a poet, _The Borough_ (1810), and _Tales in Verse_ (1812). The poems in their succession show little development, resembling each other closely both in subject and style. They are collections of tales, told in heroic couplets with much sympathy and a good deal of pathetic power, dealing with the lives of simple countryfolk such as Crabbe encountered in his own parish. There is a large amount of strong natural description, though it is subsidiary to the human interest in the stories themselves. Crabbe has often been criticized for being too gloomy and pessimistic; he is pessimistic in the sense that he is stubbornly alive to the miseries of the poor, and he is at a loss how to relieve them. His work was warmly recognized by Wordsworth and other thinkers who had the welfare of the poor at heart. Crabbe, however, cannot be classed as a great poet; he lacks the supreme poetic gift of transforming even squalor and affliction into things of splendor and appeal; but he is sympathetic, sincere, and an acute observer of human nature.

=5. Mark Akenside (1721–70).= Akenside was born at Newcastle, studied medicine at Edinburgh, and graduated at Leyden in 1744. He started practice at Northampton, but did not succeed. Later he had more success in London. In the capital he took to political writing, in which he was moderately proficient, and he obtained a pension as a reward. He was a well-known character, and is said to have been caricatured by Smollett in _Peregrine Pickle_.

His best political poem is his _Epistle to Curio_ (1744), which contains some brilliant invective against Pulteney. His best-known book is _The Pleasures of the Imagination_ (1744), a long and rambling blank-verse poem. The style is somewhat Miltonic in its energy and its turn of phrase, but it is deficient in the Miltonic genius. The poem has some loud but rather fine descriptive passages, especially those dealing with his native Tyne, for the beauties of which he shows a laudable enthusiasm.

=6. Christopher Smart (1722–71).= Smart was born in Kent, and was educated at Cambridge, where he graduated. He was a man of unbalanced mind, which, leading him into many extravagances, brought him finally to a madhouse and a miserable death in a debtor’s prison.

The poem connected with his name is _The Song to David_ (1763), which is said to have been partly written on the walls of the madhouse in which he was confined. The poem, consisting of nearly a hundred six-line stanzas, is a wild, rhapsodical effusion, full of extravagance and incoherence, but in places containing bursts of tremendous poetic power. The following stanzas, the last in the poem, give an idea of these poetical bomb-shells:

Glorious the sun in mid career;
Glorious the assembled fires appear;
Glorious the comet’s train:
Glorious the trumpet and alarm;
Glorious the Almighty’s stretched-out arm;
Glorious the enraptured main:

Glorious the northern lights astream;
Glorious the song, when God’s the theme;
Glorious the thunder’s roar:
Glorious hosanna from the den;
Glorious the catholic amen;
Glorious the martyr’s gore:

Glorious--more glorious is the crown
Of Him that brought salvation down,
By meekness called thy Son;
Thou that stupendous truth believed,
And now the matchless deed’s achieved,
Determined, Dared, and Done.

=7. William Shenstone (1714–63).= Born at the Leasowes, in Worcestershire, Shenstone was educated at Oxford. After leaving the university he retired to his estate, which he beautified in the fashion of the time. He was a man of an agreeable nature, but was shy and retiring, and spent nearly all his life in the country.

His published works consist chiefly of odes, elegies, and what he called _Levities, or Pieces of Humour_ (often dreary enough), and _The Schoolmistress_ (1742). His poems are largely pastoral, but they are by no means the artificial pastoral of Pope. He studies nature himself, and does not derive his notions from books. In this matter he resembles Cowper. _The Schoolmistress_, which by a notable advance is written in the Spenserian stanza, deals in rather a sentimental fashion with the teacher in his first school; it is sympathetic in treatment, and in style is an interesting example of the transition.

=8. Charles Churchill (1731–64).= Churchill was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, took orders (1756), and obtained a curacy. When he was about twenty-seven years old he suddenly started on a wild course of conduct, abandoned his curacy, took to politics and hack journalism, and to drinking and debauchery. He died at Boulogne at the age of thirty-three.

He lives in literature as a satirical poet, and the best of his work is in _The Rosciad_ (1761), a bitter attack on the chief political and social figures of the time. The poem, which is written in the Dryden heroic couplet, was greeted as the work of a new Dryden, but it has little of that poet’s superb elevation and contempt. It is vigorous and acute, but it is too often cheap and nasty. It had much popularity, but when the topical need for it was over it had no permanent value. Churchill continued to satirize the age in a wild indiscriminate fashion in poems called _Night_ (1761), _The Ghost_ (1763), and _The Prophecy of Famine_ (1763).

=9. Robert Blair (1699–1746).= Blair was born at Edinburgh, and became a clergyman in East Lothian. The poem that brought him his transitory reputation was _The Grave_ (1743). It is a long blank-verse poem of meditation on man’s mortality. It does not make cheerful reading, and the sentiments are quite ordinary. It has, however, a certain strength and dignity, and the versification shows skill and some degree of freshness. The poem is reminiscent of Young’s _Night Thoughts_.

ROBERT BURNS (1759–96)

In this section we shall deal with those poets who wrote in the middle and later years of the eighteenth century, and who abandoned the classical tradition. In their generation they came too early to be definitely included in the school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, but in their work they are often as romantically inclined as any of their great successors. We begin with Burns, one of the latest, and probably the greatest, of Wordsworth’s poetical forbears. With the appearance of Burns we can say that the day of Romanticism is come. There had been false dawns and deceptive premonitions, but with him we have, in the words of Swinburne,

A song too loud for the lark,
A light too strong for a star.

=1. His Life.= He was born in a small clay-built cottage, the work of his father’s hands, in the district of Kyle, in Ayrshire. His father, a small farmer, was a man of an unbending disposition, and the boy had to toil with the rest of the family to wring subsistence from the soil. He had not much formal education, and all his life he tried spasmodically to improve it; but it was mainly the force of his own natural ability that permitted him to absorb the moderate amount of learning he did acquire. As he grew older he showed himself to be the possessor of a powerful and lively mind, which was often afflicted with spasms of acute mental depression. The audacity of his temper soon brought him into extravagances of conduct which were visited by the censure and punishment of the rigid Scottish Church. For Burns’s own sake it is unfortunate that his memory has been pursued with an infatuation of hero-worship that seeks to extenuate and even to deny facts that are grave and indisputable. One can only say that his chief weaknesses--drink and dissipation--were largely the faults of his time. He was no worse than many other men of his age; but his poetic gifts proclaimed and perhaps exaggerated his vices, of which he repented when he was sober and unwisely boasted when he was otherwise.

His life was hard and bitter; his different attempts at farming and at other occupations met with no success, and he determined to seek his fortune in the West Indies (1786). In the nick of time he learned that the small volume of verse that he had recently issued at Kilmarnock was attracting much attention, and he was persuaded to remain in Scotland and discover what fame had in store for him. The reputation of his poems rose with prodigious rapidity, and within a year there was a demand for an Edinburgh edition. He was in Edinburgh in 1787, where he became a nine days’ wonder to the lion-hunting society of the capital city. He then obtained a small post in the Excise, and, taking a farm near Dumfries, married and essayed to lead a regular life. He found this impossible, for fame brought added temptation. His farming was a failure, and the income from his poems and from his post in the Excise was insufficient to keep him decently. At the age of thirty-seven he died at Dumfries, of premature old age.

=2. His Poetry.= His sole poetical work of any magnitude is his volume of _Poems_ (1786), which he edited five times during his lifetime, with numerous additions and corrections on each occasion. At different times he contributed to _The Scots Musical Museum_ and to Thomson’s _Select Scottish Melodies_. After the poet’s death his literary editor, Dr. Currie, published (1800) a large number of additional pieces, along with a considerable amount of correspondence.

We have thus one tale, _Tam o’ Shanter_, which was included in the third edition of the poems, that of 1793; one longish descriptive piece, _The Cotter’s Saturday Night_; more than two hundred songs, ranging in quality from very good to middling; and a great number of short epistles, epigrams, elegies, and other types of miscellaneous verse.