Chapter VI: From the Restoration, 1660, to the Publication of Pamela, (2)

"We were no sooner come to the Temple Stairs, but we were surrounded
with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services.
Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one
with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat
ready. As we were walking towards it, 'You must know,' says Sir
Roger, 'I never make use of anybody to row me, that has not either
lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his
oar than not employ an honest man that had been wounded in the
Queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I
would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.'"

Such humor, which finds its chief point in a desire to make the world kindlier, must have appealed to the eighteenth century, or _The Spectator_ could not have reached a circulation of ten thousand copies a day. Addison would not now have his legion of warm admirers if his humor had been personal, like Pope's, or misanthropical, like Swift's.

Of his style, Dr. Samuel Johnson says, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the study of Addison." Benjamin Franklin, as we know from his _Autobiography_, followed this advice with admirable results. Addison's style seems as natural and easy as the manners of a well-bred person. When we have given some attention to dissecting his style, we may indeed discover that a prose model for to-day should have more variety and energy and occasionally more precision; but such a conclusion does not mean that any writer of this century would like the task of surpassing the _De Coverley Papers_.

ALEXANDER POPE, 1688-1744

Life.--Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. His father, a devout Catholic, was a linen merchant, who gave his son little formal schooling, but allowed him to pick up his education by reading such authors as pleased his fancy.

He was a very precocious child. At the age of twelve he was writing an _Ode on Solitude_. He chose his vocation early, for writing poetry was the business of his life.

In his childhood, his parents removed from London to Binfield, a village in Berkshire, nine miles from Windsor. When he was nearly thirty years old, his translation of the _Iliad_ enabled him to buy a house and grounds at Twickenham on the Thames, about twelve miles above London. He lived here for the rest of his life, indulging his taste for landscape gardening and entertaining the greatest men of the age.

After early middle life, his writings made him pecuniarily independent, but he suffered much from ill health. In his _Lives of the English Poets_, Dr. Samuel Johnson says of Pope:--

"By natural deformity, or accidental distortion, his vital functions
were so much disordered that his life was a long disease... When he
rose, he was invested in a bodice made of stiff canvas, being scarce
able to hold himself erect till they were laced, and he then put on
a flannel waistcoat. One side was contracted. His legs were so
slender that he enlarged their bulk with three pair of stockings...

"In all his intercourse with mankind, he had great delight in
artifice, and endeavored to attain all his purposes by indirect and
unsuspected methods. _He hardly drank tea without a stratagem._"

The publication of his correspondence tangled him in a mesh of deceptions, because his desire to appear in a favorable light led him to change letters that he had sent to friends. His double-dealing, intense jealousy, and irritability, due to his physical condition, caused him to become involved in many quarrels, which gave him the opportunity to indulge to the utmost his own satiric tendency. In one of his late satires, _The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_, he charged Addison with the inclination to--

"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."

On the basis of what he wrote, we may divide his life into three periods. During his first thirty years, he produced various kinds of verse, like the _Essay on Criticism_ and _The Rape of the Lock_. The middle period of his life was marked by his translation of Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. In his third period, he wrote moral and didactic poems, like the _Essay on Man_, and satires, like the _Dunciad_.

Some Poems of the First Period: Essay on Criticism and The Rape of the Lock.--Pope's first published poem, _The Pastorals_, which appeared in 1709, was followed in 1711 by _An Essay on Criticism_,--an exquisite setting of a number of gems of criticism which had for a long time been current. Pope's intention in writing this poem may be seen from what he himself says: "It seems not so much the perfection of sense to say things that have never been said before, as to express those best that have been said oftenest."

From this point of view, the poem is remarkable. No other writer, except Shakespeare, has in an equal number of lines said so many things which have passed into current quotation. Rare perfection in the form of statement accounts for this. The poem abounds in such lines as these:--

"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

"To err is human, to forgive divine."

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

"In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold,
Alike fantastic if too new or old:
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

_The Rape of the Lock_, which is Pope's masterpiece, is almost a romantic poem, even though it is written in classical couplets. It was a favorite with Oliver Goldsmith, and James Russell Lowell rightly say says: "The whole poem more truly deserves the name of a creation than anything Pope ever wrote." The poem is a mock epic, and it has the supernatural machinery which was supposed to be absolutely necessary for an epic. In place of the gods and goddesses of the great epics, however, the fairy-like sylphs help to guide the action of this poem.

The poem, which is founded on an actual incident, describes a young lord's theft of a lock of hair from the head of a court beauty. Pope composed _The Rape of the Lock_ to soothe her indignation and to effect a reconciliation. The whole of this poem should be read by the student, as it is a vivid satiric picture of fashionable life in Queen Anne's reign.

Translation of Homer.--Pope's chief work during the middle period of his life was his translation of the _Iliad_ and of the _Odyssey_ of Homer. From a financial point of view, these translations were the most successful of his labors. They brought him in nearly £9000, and made him independent of bookseller or of nobleman.

The remarkable success of these works is strange when we remember that Pope's knowledge of Greek was very imperfect, and that he was obliged to consult translations before attempting any passage. The Greek scholar Bentley, a contemporary of Pope, delivered a just verdict on the translation: "A pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." The historian Gibbon said that the poem had every merit except faithfulness to the original.

Homer is simple and direct. He abounds in concrete terms. Pope dislikes a simple term and loves a circumlocution and an abstraction. We have the concrete "herd of swine" translated into "a bristly care," "skins," into "furry spoils." The concrete was considered common and undignified. Homer says in simple language: "His father wept with him," but Pope translates this: "The father poured a social flood."

Pope used to translate thirty or forty verses of the _Iliad_ before rising, and then to spend a considerable time in polishing them. But half of the translation of the _Odyssey_ is his own work. He employed assistants to finish the other half; but it is by no means easy to distinguish his work from theirs.

Some Poems of his Third Period: "Essay on Man," and "Satires."--The _Essay on Man_ is a philosophical poem with the avowed object of vindicating the ways of God to man. The entire poem is an amplification of the idea contained in these lines:--

"All nature is but art unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good.
And spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."

The chief merit of the poem consists in throwing into polished form many of the views current at the time, so that they may be easily understood. Before we read very far we come across such old acquaintances as--

"The proper study of mankind is man."

"An honest man's the noblest work of God."

"Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

The _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_ and _The Dunciad_ are Pope's greatest satires. In _The Dunciad_, an epic of the dunces, he holds up to ridicule every person and writer who had offended him. These were in many cases scribblers who had no business with a pen; but in a few instances they were the best scholars of that day. A great deal of the poem is now very tiresome reading. Much of it is brutal. Pope was a powerful agent, as Thackeray says, in rousing that obloquy which has ever since pursued a struggling author. _The Dunciad_ could be more confidently consulted about contemporary literary history, if Pope had avoided such unnecessary misstatements as:--

"Earless on high, stood unabash'd De Foe."

This line is responsible for the current unwarranted belief that the author of _Robinson Crusoe_ lost his ears in the pillory.

General Characteristics.---Pope has not strong imagination, a keen feeling for nature, or wide sympathy with man. Leslie Stephen says: "Pope never crosses the undefinable, but yet ineffaceable line, which separates true poetry from rhetoric." The debate in regard to whether Pope's verse is ever genuine poetry may not yet be settled to the satisfaction of all; but it is well to recognize the undoubted fact that his couplets still appeal to many readers who love clearness and precision and who are not inclined to wrestle with the hidden meaning of greater poetry. One of his poems, _The Rape of the Lock_, has become almost a universal favorite because of its humor, good-natured satire, and entertaining pictures of society in Queen Anne's time.

He is the poet who best expresses the classical spirit of the eighteenth century. He excels in satiric and didactic verse. He expresses his ideas in perfect form, and embodies them in classical couplets, sometimes styled "rocking-horse meter"; but he shows no power of fathoming the emotional depths of the soul.

In the history of literature, he holds an important place, because, more than any other writer, he calls attention to the importance of correctness of form and of careful expression. He is the prince of artificial poets. Though he erred in exalting form above matter, he taught his age the needed lesson of careful workmanship.

SUMMARY

The Restoration and the first part of the eighteenth century display a low moral standard in both church and state. This standard had its effect on literature. The drama shows marked decline. We find no such sublime outbursts of song as characterize the Elizabethan and Puritan ages. The writers chose satiric or didactic subjects, and avoided pathos, deep feeling, and sublimity. French influence was paramount.

The classical school, which loved polished regularity, set the fashion in literature. An old idea, dressed in exquisite form, was as welcome as a new one. Anything strange, irregular, romantic, full of feeling, highly imaginative, or improbable to the intellect, was unpopular. Even in _Gulliver's Travels_, Swift endeavored to be as realistic as if he were demonstrating a geometrical proposition.

Dryden and Pope are the two chief poets of the classical school. Both use the riming couplet and are distinguished for their satiric and didactic verse. Their poetry shows more intellectual brilliancy than imaginative power. They display little sympathy with man and small love for nature.

The age is far more remarkable for its prose than for its poetry. French influence helped to develop a concise, flexible, energetic prose style. The deterioration in poetry was partly compensated for by the rapid advances in prose, which needed the influences working toward artistic finish. Because of its cleverness, avoidance of long sentences, and of classical inversions, Dryden's prose is essentially modern. Defoe's _Robinson Crusoe_ is the world's most popular story of adventure, told in simple and direct, but seemingly artless, prose. Of all the prose writers since Swift's time, few have equaled him and still fewer surpassed him in simplicity, flexibility, directness, and lack of affectation. The essays of Steele and Addison constitute a landmark. No preceding English prose shows so much grace of style, delicate humor, and power of awakening and retaining interest as do the _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_.

The influence of this age was sufficient to raise permanently the standard level of artistic literary expression. The unpruned, shapeless, and extravagant forms of earlier times will no longer be tolerated.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY

HISTORICAL

An account of the history of this period may be found in either Gardiner,[3] Green, Walker, or Cheney. Vols. VIII. and IX. of the _Political History of England_ give the history in greater detail. For the social side, consult Traill, Vols. IV. and V., and Cheney's _Industrial and Social History of England._ Lecky's _History of England in the Eighteenth Century_ is an excellent work.

LITERARY

_The Cambridge History of English Literature,_ Vols. VIII., IX., X.

Courthope's _A History of English Poetry_, Vols. III., IV., and V.

Stephen's _English Literature in the Eighteenth Century_.

Taine's _History of English Literature_, Book III., Chaps. I., II., III.

Gosse's _History of Eighteenth Century Literature_ begins with 1660.

Garnett's _The Age of Dryden_.

Phillips's _Popular Manual of English Literature_, Vol. I.

Minto's _Manual of English Prose Literature_.

Saintsbury's _Life of Dryden_. (E.M.L.)

Macaulay's _Essay on Dryden_.

Lowell's _Essay on Dryden_ in _Among My Books_.

Dryden's _Essays on the Drama_, edited by Strunk.

Fowler's _Life of Locke_. (E.M.L.)

Stephen's _History of Thought in the Eighteenth Century_.

Dennis's _The Age of Pope_.

Thackeray's _English Humorists_ (Swift, Addison, Steele, Pope).

Stephen's _Life of Swift_. (E.M.L.)

Craik's _Life of Swift_.

Courthope's _Life of Addison_. (E.M.L.)

Macaulay's _Essay on Addison_.

Stephen's _Life of Pope_. (E.M.L.)

De Quincey's _Essay on Pope_, and _On the Poetry of Pope_.

Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_ (Dryden, Pope, Addison).

Lowell's _My Study Windows_ (Pope).

SUGGESTED READINGS WITH QUESTIONS AND SUGGESTIONS

Dryden.--From his lyrical verse, read _Alexander's Feast_ or _A Song for St. Cecilia's Day_. The opening lines of _Religio Laici_ or of _The Hind and the Panther_ will serve as a specimen of his argumentative or didactic verse and _Absalom and Achitophel_ for his satire. (Cassell's _National Library_, 15 cents.)

Selections are given in Ward,[4] II., 454-483; Bronson, III., 20-58; Manly, I., 203-209; _Oxford Treasury_, III., 99-110; _Century_, 266-285.

For his critical prose, read _An Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ (Strunk's edition of _Dryden's Essays on the Drama_). For selections see Craik, III., 148-154; Manly, II., 146-163; _Century_, 276-285.

What is the chief subject matter of Dryden's verse? Point out typical qualities in his argumentative and satiric verse. Give definite instances of his power in argument and satire.

Why is his prose called modern? Point out some of its qualities.

Defoe.--Read or reread _Robinson Crusoe_ and point out where he specially shows the skill of the journalist in the presentation of his facts. Can you select passages that show the justice of the criticism? How would the interest in the story have been affected, had Defoe, like the author of _Swiss Family Robinson_, caused the shipwreck to occur on an island where tropical fruits would have rendered unnecessary Crusoe's labor to secure food?

Swift.--Caik's _English Prose Selections_, Vol. III., pp. 391-424, contains representative selections from Swift's prose. The best of these are _The Philosophy of Clothes_, from _A Tale of a Tub_ (Craik, III., 398); _A Digression concerning Critics_, from the same (Craik, III., 400); _The Emperor of Lilliput_ (Craik, III., 417) and _The King of Brobdingnag_ (Craik, III., 419), from _Gulliver's Travels_.

Selections may be found also in Manly, II., 184-198; _Oxford Treasury_, III., 125-129; _Century_, 299-323.

Is Swift's a good prose style? Does he use ornament? Can you find a passage where he strives after effect? In what respects do the subjects which he chooses and his manner of treating them show the spirit of the age? Why is _Gulliver's Travels_ so popular? What are the most important lessons which a young writer may learn from Swift? In what is he specially lacking?

Addison and Steele.--From the _Sir Roger de Coverley Papers_ the student should not fail to read _Spectator No. 112, A Country Sunday_. He may then read _Spectator No. 2_, by Steele, which sketches the De Coverley characters, and compare the style and characteristics of the two authors. The student who has the time at this point should read all the _De Coverley Papers_ (_Eclectic English Classics_, American Book Company).

Good selections from both Addison and Steele may be found in Craik, III., 469-535; Manly, II., 198-216; _Century_, 324-349.

In what did Addison and Steele excel? What qualities draw so many readers to the _De Coverley Papers_? Why may they be called a prelude to the modern novel?

Select passages which will serve to bring into sharp contrast the style and humor of Swift and of Addison.

Pope.--Read _The Rape of the Lock_ (printed with the _Essay on Man_ in _Eclectic English Classics_, American Book Company, 20 cents). Selections from this are given in Ward, III., 73-82. The _Essay on Man_, Book I. (Ward, III., 85-91), will serve as a specimen of his didactic verse. The _Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot_ (Ward, III., 103-105) will illustrate his satire, and the lines from the _Iliad_ in Ward, III., 82, will show the characteristics of his translation.

_The Rape of the Lock_ and full selections are given in Bronson, III., 89-144; _Century_, 350-368; Manly, I., 228-253.

How does Pope show the spirit of the classical school? What are his special merits and defects? Does an examination of his poetry convince you that Leslie Stephen's criticism is right? Select lines from six great poets of different periods. Place beside these selections some of Pope's best lines, and see if you have a clearer idea of the difference between rhetoric and true poetry.

FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER VI:

[Footnote 1: _Essay on Criticism_, lines 297, 298.]

[Footnote 2: For a list of the chief dramatists of the Restoration and their best work, see p. 626.]

[Footnote 3: For full titles, see p. 50.]

[Footnote 4: For full titles, see p. 6.]