Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities Part 40

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), one of the most celebrated of the professional authors of the eighteenth century, however, belongs to this period.

Compelled by poverty to leave his education uncompleted, he sought the means of living in London, where, for a long time, unpatronized and obscure, he labored with dogged perseverance, until at length he won a fame which must have satisfied the most grasping ambition, but when, as he says, "most of those whom he had wished to please had sunk into the grave, and he had little to fear from censure or praise." That the reputation of his writings was above their deserts, cannot be denied, though it must also be admitted that the literature of our time is deficient in many of their excellences, both of thought and expression. They are the fruit of a strong and original mind, working with imperfect knowledge and an inadequate scope for activity. The language of Johnson is superior to his matter; he has striking force of diction, and many of his sentences roll on the ear like the sound of the distant sea, while the thoughts they convey impress us so vividly that we are slow to scrutinize them. His great merit lies in the two departments of morals and criticism, but everywhere he is inconsistent and unequal. His Dictionary occupied him for eight years, but it is of little value now to the student of language, being poor and incorrect in etymology and unsatisfactory though acute in definition. His poems, which are of Pope's school, would scarcely have preserved his name. The "Rambler," and "Ra.s.selas," are characteristic of his merits and defects. The "Tour to the Hebrides" is one of the most pleasant and easy of his writings. His "Lives of the Poets" is admirable for its skill of narration, but it is alternately enlightened and unsound in criticism, and frequently marred by political prejudices and personal jealousies.

Of the novels of the time, the series begun by Richardson's (1689-1761) "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "Sir Charles Grandison" have a virtuous aim, but they err by the plainness with which they describe vice. The tediousness and overwrought sentimentality of these works go far towards disqualifying the reader from appreciating their extraordinary skill in invention and in the portraiture of character.

Fielding (1707-1757) unites these qualities with greater knowledge of the world, pungent wit, and idiomatic strength of style. His mastery in the art of fict.i.tious narrative has never been excelled; but his living pictures of familiar life, as well as the whimsical caricatures of Smollett and the humorous fantasies of Sterne, are disfigured by faults of which the very smallest are coa.r.s.eness of language and bareness of licentious description, in which they outdid Richardson. Not only is their standard of morality low, but they display indifference to the essential distinctions of right and wrong, in regard to some of the cardinal relations of society.

The drama of the period has little literary importance. In non-dramatic poetry, several men of distinguished genius appeared, and changes occurred which indicated more just and comprehensive views of the art than those that had been prevalent in the last generation.

Young (1681-1765), in his "Night Thoughts," produced a work eloquent rather than poetical, dissertative when true poetry would have been imaginative, but suggesting much of imagery and feeling as well as religious reflection.

Resembling it in some points, but with more force of imagination, is the train of gloomy scenes which appears in Blair's "Grave." In Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination," a vivid fancy and an alluring pomp of language are lavished on a series of pictures ill.u.s.trating the feelings of beauty and sublimity; but, theorizing and poetizing by turns, the poet loses his hold of the reader.

The more direct and effective forms of poetry now came again into favor, such as the Scottish pastoral drama of Ramsay, and Falconer's "s.h.i.+pwreck."

But the most decisive instance of the growing insight into the true functions of poetry is furnished by Thomson's (1700-1748) "Seasons." No poet has ever been more inspired by the love of external nature, or felt with more keenness and delicacy those a.n.a.logies between the mind and the things it looks upon, which are the fountains of poetic feeling. The faults of Thomson are triteness of thought when he becomes argumentative and a prevalent pomposity and pedantry of diction; though his later work, "The Castle of Indolence," is surprisingly free from these blemishes.

But the age was an unpoetical one, and two of the finest poetical minds of the nation were so dwarfed and weakened by the ungenial atmosphere as to bequeath to posterity nothing more than a few lyrical fragments. In the age which admired the smooth feebleness of Shenstone's pastorals and elegies, and which closed when the libels of Churchill were held to be good examples of poetical satire, Gray turned aside from the unrequited labors of verse to idle in his study, and Collins lived and died almost unknown. Gray (1716-1771) was as consummate a poetical artist as Pope. His fancy was less lively, but his sympathies were warmer and more expanded, though the polished aptness of language and symmetry of construction which give so cla.s.sical an aspect to his Odes bring with them a tinge of cla.s.sical coldness. The "Ode on Eton College" is more genuinely lyrical than "The Bards," and the "Elegy In a Country Churchyard" is perhaps faultless.

The Odes of Collins (1720-1759) have more of the fine and spontaneous enthusiasm of genius than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close his tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished.

His range of tones is very wide, and the delicacy of gradation with which he pa.s.ses from thought to thought has an indescribable charm. His most popular poem, "The Pa.s.sions," conveys no adequate idea of some of his most marked characteristics. All can understand the beauty and simplicity of his odes "To Pity," "To Simplicity," "To Mercy;" and the finely woven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures in the "Ode to Evening" recall the youthful poems of Milton.

Between the period just reviewed and the reign of George III., or the Third Generation of the eighteenth century, there were several connecting links, one of which was formed by a group of historians whose works are cla.s.sical monuments of English literature. The publication of Hume's "History of England" began in 1754. Robertson's "History of Scotland"

appeared in 1759, followed by his "Reign of Charles V." and his "History of America;" Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was completed in twelve years from 1776. The narrative of Hume is told with great clearness, good sense, and quiet force of representation, and if his matter had been as carefully studied as his manner, if his social and religious theories had been as sound as his theory of literary art, his history would still hold a place from which no rival could hope to degrade it.

The style of Robertson and Gibbon is totally unlike that of Hume. They want his seemingly unconscious ease, his delicate tact, and his calm yet lively simplicity. Hume tells his tale to us as a friend to friends; his successors always seem to hold that they are teachers and we pupils. This change of tone had long been coming on, and was now very general in all departments of prose. Very few writers of the last thirty years of Johnson's life escaped this epidemic desire of dictators.h.i.+p. Robertson (1722-1793) is an excellent story-teller, perspicuous, lively, and interesting. His opinions are wisely formed and temperately expressed, his disquisitions able and instructive, and his research so accurate that he is still a valuable historical authority.

The learning of Gibbon (1737-1794), though not always exact, was remarkably extensive, and sufficient to make him a trustworthy guide, unless in those points where he was inclined to lead astray. There is a patrician haughtiness in the stately march of his narrative and in the air of careless superiority with which he treats his heroes and his audience.

He is a master in the art of painting and narration, nor is he less skillful in indirect insinuation, which is, indeed, his favorite mode of communicating his own opinions, but he is most striking in those pa.s.sages in his history of the church, where he covertly attacks a religion which he neither believed nor understood.

Other historians produced works useful in their day, but now, for the most part, superseded; and in various other departments men of letters actively exerted themselves.

Johnson, seated at last in his easy-chair, talked for twenty years, the oracle of the literary world, and Boswell, soon after his death, gave to the world the clever record of these conversations, which has aided to secure the place in literature he had obtained by his writings. Goldsmith (1728-1774), had he never written poems, would stand among the cla.s.sic writers of English prose from the few trifles on which he was able, in the intervals of literary drudgery, to exercise his powers of observation and invention, and to exhibit his warm affections and purity of moral sentiment. Such is his inimitable little novel, "The Vicar of Wakefield,"

and that good-natured satire on society, the "Citizen of the World."

Among the novelists, Mackenzie (1745-1831) wrote his "Man of Peeling," not unworthy of the companions.h.i.+p of Goldsmith's masterpiece; and among later novelists, Walpole, Moore, c.u.mberland, Mrs. Inchbald, and Charlotte Smith, Miss Burney and Mrs. Radcliffe may also be named.

In literary criticism, the authoritative book of the day was Johnson's "Lives of the Poets." Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1765) was a delightful compilation, which, after being quite neglected for many years, became the poetical text-book of Sir Walter Scott and the poets of his time. A more scientific and ambitious effort was Warton's (1729-1790) "History of English Poetry," which has so much of antiquarian learning, poetical taste, and spirited writing, that it is not only an indispensable and valuable authority, but an interesting book to the mere amateur. With many errors and deficiencies, it has yet little chance of being ever entirely superseded.

In parliamentary eloquence, before the middle of the eighteenth century, we have the commanding addresses of the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham), and at the close, still leading the senate, are the younger Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Burke. Burke (1730-1797) must be remembered not only for his speeches but for his writing on political and social questions, as a great thinker of comprehensive and versatile intellect, and extraordinary power of eloquence.

The letters of "Junius," a remarkable series of papers, the authors.h.i.+p of which is still involved in mystery, appeared in a London daily journal from 1769 to 1772. They were remarkable for the audacity of their attacks upon the government, the court, and persons high in power, and from their extraordinary ability and point they produced an indelible impression on the public mind. The "Letters" of Walpole are poignantly satirical; those of Cowper are models of easy writing, and lessons of rare dignity and purity of sentiment.

In the history of philosophy, the middle of the eighteenth century was a very important epoch; before the close of the century, almost all of those works had appeared which have had the greatest influence on more recent thinking. These works may be divided into four cla.s.ses. Under the first, Philosophical Criticism, may be cla.s.sed Burke's treatise "On the Sublime and Beautiful," Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Discourse on Painting," Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric," Kames's "Elements of Criticism," Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," and Horne Tooke's "Philosophy of Language."

In the second department, Political Economy, Adam Smith's great work, "The Wealth of Nations," stands alone, and is still acknowledged as the standard text-book of this science.

In the third department, Ethics, are Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiment,"

Tucker's "Light of Nature," and Paley's "Moral and Political Philosophy."

In the fourth or Metaphysical department, we have only to note the rise of the Scottish School, under Thomas Reid (1710-1796), who combats each of the three schools, the Sensualistic evolved from Locke, holding that our ideas are all derived from sensation; the Idealistic, as proposed by Berkeley, which, allowing the existence of mind, denies that of matter; and the Skeptical, headed by Hume, which denies that we can know anything at all. Reid is a bold, dry, but very clear and logical writer, a sincere lover of truth, and a candid and honorable disputant; his system is original and important in the history of philosophy.

In the theological literature of this time are found Campbell's "Essay on Miracles," Paley's "Evidences of Christianity" and "Natural Theology," and Bishop Watson's "Apology for Christianity."

Among the devout teachers of religion was John Newton of Olney, the spiritual guide of Cowper; and of the moral writers, Hannah More and Wilberforce may be mentioned.

The only tragedy that has survived from these last forty years of the eighteenth century is the "Douglas" of Home, whose melody and romantic pathos lose much of their effect from its monotony of tone and feebleness in the representation of character. Comedy was oftener successful. There was little merit in the plays of the elder Colman or those of Mrs. Cowley, or of c.u.mberland. The comedies of Goldsmith abound in humor and gayety, and those of Sheridan have an unintermitted fire of epigrams, a keen insight into the follies and weaknesses of society, and great ingenuity in inventing whimsical situations. Of the verse-writers in the time of Johnson's old age, Goldsmith has alone achieved immortality. "The Traveller" and "The Deserted Village" cannot be forgotten while the English tongue is remembered.

The foundations of a new school of poetry were already laid. Percy's "Reliques" and Macpherson's "Fingal" attracted great attention, and many minor poets followed.

The short career of the unhappy Chatterton (1752-1770) held out wonderful promise of genius.

Darwin, in his "Botanic Garden," went back to the mazes of didactic verse.

Seattle's (1735-1803) "Minstrel" is the outpouring of a mind exquisitely poetical in feeling; it is a kind of autobiography or a.n.a.lytic narrative of the early growth of a poet's mind and heart, and is one of the most delightful poems in our language.

Opening with Goldsmith, our period closes with Cowper and Burns. The unequaled popularity of Cowper's (1731-1800) poems is owing, in part, to the rarity of good religious poetry, and also to their genuine force and originality. He unhesitatingly made poetry use, always when it was convenient, the familiar forms of common conversation, and he showed yet greater boldness by seeking to interest his readers in the scenes of everyday life. In spite of great faults, the effect of his works is such as only a genuine poet could have produced. His translation of the Iliad has the simplicity of the original, though wanting its warlike fervor, and portions of the Odyssey are rendered with exceeding felicity of poetic effect.

Our estimate of Cowper's poems is heightened by our love and pity for the poet, writing not for fame but for consolation, and uttering from the depths of a half-broken heart his reverent homage to the power of religious truth. Our affection is not colder, and our compa.s.sion is more profound, when we contemplate the agitated and erring life of Robert Burns (1759-1796), the Scottish peasant, who has given to the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race some of its most precious jewels, although all which this extraordinary man achieved was inadequate to the power and the vast variety of his endowments. It is on his songs that his fame rests most firmly, and no lyrics in any tongue have a more wonderful union of thrilling pa.s.sion, melting tenderness, concentrated expressiveness of language, and apt and natural poetic fancy. But neither the song nor the higher kinds of lyrical verse could give scope to the qualities he has elsewhere shown; his aptness in representing the phases of human character, his genial breadth and keenness of humor, and his strength of creative imagination, indicate that if born under a more benignant star he might have been a second Chaucer.

5. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--In the ill.u.s.trious band of poets who enriched the literature of England during the first generation of the present century, there are four who have gained greater fame than any others, and exercised greater influence on their contemporaries. These are Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, who, though unlike, yet in respect of their ruling spirit and tendencies may be cla.s.sed in pairs as they have been named; and all whose works call for exact scrutiny may be distributed into four groups. In the first of them stand Thomas Campbell and Robert Southey, dissimilar to each other, and differing as widely from their contemporaries. Campbell (1777-1844) employed an unusually delicate taste in elaborating his verses both in diction and melody. His "Pleasures of Hope" was written between youth and manhood, and "Gertrude of Wyoming,"

the latest of his productions worthy of him, appeared soon after his thirtieth year. His mind, deficient in manly vigor of thought, had worked itself out in the few first bursts of youthful emotion, but no one has clothed with more of romantic sweetness the feelings and fancies which people the fairy-land of early dreams, or thrown around the enchanted region a purer atmosphere of moral contemplation.

Southey (1774-1843), with an ethical tone higher and sterner than Campbell's, offers in other features a marked contrast to him. He is careless in details, and indulges no poetical reveries; he scorns sentimentalism, and throws off rapid sketches of human action with great pomp of imagery, but he seldom touches the key of the pathetic. In much of this he is the man of his age, but in other respects he is above it. He is the only poet of his clay who strove to emulate the great masters of epic song, and to give his works external symmetry of plan. He alone attempted to give poetry internal union, by making it the representation of one leading idea; a loftier theory of poetic art than that which ruled the irregular outbursts of Scott and Byron. But the aspiration was above the competency of the aspirer. He wanted spontaneous depth of sympathy; his emotion has the measured flow of the artificial ca.n.a.l, not the leaping gush of the river in its self-worn channel. In two of the three best poems he has founded the interest on supernatural agency of a kind which cannot command even momentary belief and the splendid panoramas of "Thalaba the Destroyer" pa.s.s away like the shadows of a magic lantern. In the "Curse of Kehama," he strives to interest us in the monstrous fables of the Hindoo mythology, and in "Roderick, the Last of the Goths," the story contains circ.u.mstances that deform the fairest proof the author gave of the practicability of his poetic theory.

The second group of poets, unless Moore find a place in it, will contain only Scott and Byron, who were in succession the most popular of all, and owed their popularity mainly to characteristics which they had in common.

They are distinctively the poets of active life. They portray idealized resemblances of the scenes of reality, events which arise out of the universal relations of society, hopes, fears, and wishes which are open to the consciousness of all mankind. The originals of Scott were the romances of chivalry, and this example was applied by Byron to the construction of narratives founded on a different kind of sentiment. Scott, wearying of the narrow round that afforded him no scope for some of his best and strongest powers, turned aside to lavish them on his prose romances, and Byron, as his knowledge grew and his meditations became deeper, rose from Turkish tales to the later cantos of "Childe Harold."

Scott (1771-1832), in his poetical narratives, appealed to national sympathies through enn.o.bling historic recollections. He painted the externals of scenery and manners with unrivaled picturesqueness, and embellished all that was generous and brave in the world of chivalry with an infectious enthusiasm. "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," a romance of border chivalry, has a more consistent unity than its successors, and is more faithful to the ancient models. "Marmion" seeks to combine the chivalrous romance with the metrical chronicle. "The Lady of the Lake" is a kind of romantic pastoral, and "Rokeby" is a Waverley novel in verse.

The moral faults of the poetry of Byron (1788-1824) became more glaring as he grew older. Starting with the carelessness of ill-trained youth in regard to most serious truths, he provoked censure without scruple, and was censured not without caprice; thus placed in a dangerous and false position, he hardened himself into a contempt for the most sacred laws of society, and although the closing scenes of his life give reason for a belief that purer and more elevated views were beginning to dawn upon his mind, he died before the amendment had found its way into his writings. He endeavored to inculcate lessons that are positively bad; his delinquency did not consist in choosing for representation scenes of violent pa.s.sion and guilty horror, it lay deeper than in his theatrical fondness for identifying himself with his misanthropes, pirates, and seducers. He sinned more grievously still, against morality as against possibility, by mixing up, in one and the same character, the utmost extremes of vice and virtue, generosity and vindictiveness, of lofty heroism and actual grossness. But with other and great faults, he far excelled all the poets of his time in impa.s.sioned strength, varying from vehemence to pathos. He was excelled by few of them in his fine sense of the beautiful, and his combination of pa.s.sion with beauty, standing unapproachable in his own day, has hardly ever been surpa.s.sed.

His tales, except "Parisina" and the "Prisoner of Chillon," rise less often than his other poems into that flow of poetic imagery, prompted by the loveliness of nature, which he had attempted in the two first cantos of "Childe Harold," and poured forth with added fullness of thought and emotion in the last two. "Manfred," with all its shortcomings, shows perhaps most adequately his poetic temperament; and his tragedies, though not worthy of the poet, are of all his works those which do most honor to the man.

The third section of this honored file of poets contains the names of Coleridge and Wordsworth; they are characteristically the poets of imagination, of reflection, and of a tone of sentiment that owes its attraction to its ideal elevation. Admired and emulated by a few zealous students, Coleridge became the poetical leader from the very beginning of his age, and effects yet wider have since been worked by the extended study of Wordsworth.

Coleridge (1772-1834) is the most original of the poets of his very original time, and among the most original of its thinkers. His most frequent tone of feeling is a kind of romantic tenderness or melancholy, often solemnized by an intense access of religious awe. This fine pa.s.sion is breathed out most finely when it is a.s.sociated with some of his airy glimpses of external nature, and his power of suggestive sketching is not more extraordinary than his immaculate taste and nervous precision of language. His images may be obscure, from the moonlight haze in which they float, but they are rarely so through faults of diction. It is disappointing to remember that this gifted man executed little more than fragments; his life ebbed away in the contemplation of undertakings still to be achieved, the result of weakness of will rather than of indolence.

The romance of "Christabel," the most powerful of all his works, and the prompter of Scott and Byron, was thrown aside when scarce begun, and stands as an interrupted vision of mysterious adventures clothed in the most exquisite fancies. His tragedy of "Remorse" is full of poetic pictures; the "Ode to the Departing Year" shows his force of thought and moral earnestness; "Khubla Khan" represents in its gorgeous incoherence his singular power of lighting up landscapes with thrilling fancies; and "The Dark Ladye" is one of the most tender and romantic love-poems ever written.

The most obvious feature of Wordsworth (1770-1850) is the intense and unwearied delight which he takes in all the shapes and appearances of rural and mountain scenery. He is carried away by an almost pa.s.sionate rapture when he broods over the grandeur and loveliness of the earth and air; his verse lingers with fond reluctance to depart on the wild flowers, the misty lake, the sound of the wailing blast, or the gleam of suns.h.i.+ne breaking through the pa.s.ses among the hills, and the thoughts and feelings these objects suggest flow forth with an enthusiasm of expression which in a man less pious and rational might be interpreted as a raising of the inanimate world to a level with human dignity and intelligence. The tone which prevails in his contemplation of mortal act and suffering is a serene seriousness, on which there never breaks in anything rightly to be called pa.s.sion; yet it often rises to an intensely solemn awe, and is not less often relieved by touches of a quiet pathos. Almost all his poems may be called poems of sentiment and reflection, and his own ambition was that of being worthy to be honored as a philosophical poet. His theory that the poet's function is limited to an exact representation of the real and the natural, a heresy which his own best poems triumphantly refute, often led him to triviality and meanness in the choice both of subjects and diction, and marred the beauty of many otherwise fine poems. A fascinating airiness and delicacy of conception prevail in these poems, and the tender sweetness of expression is often wonderfully touching. They were the effusions of early manhood, and the imperfect embodiments of a strength which found a freer outlet in prose. "Laodamia" and "Dion" are cla.s.sical gems without a flaw; many of the sonnets unite original thought and poetic vividness with a perfection hardly to be surpa.s.sed; above all, "The Excursion" rolls on its thousands of blank verse lines with the soul-felt harmony of a divine hymn pealed forth from a cathedral organ. We forget the insignificance characterizing the plan, which embraces nothing but a three days' walk among the mountains, and we refuse to be aroused from our trance of meditative pleasure by the occasional tediousness of dissertation. "The Excursion" abounds in verses and phrases once heard never to be forgotten, and it contains trains of poetical musing through which the poet moves with a majestic fullness of reflection and imagination not paralleled, by very far, in anything else of which our century can boast.

Wilson, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats make up the fourth poetical group. The princ.i.p.al poems of Professor Wilson (1785-1854) are the "Isle of Palms," a romance of s.h.i.+pwreck and solitude, full of rich pictures and delicate pathos, and the "City of the Plague," a series of dramatic scenes, representing with great depth of emotion a domestic tragedy from the plague of London.

Sh.e.l.ley was the pure apostle of a n.o.ble but ideal philanthropy; yet it is easy to separate his poetry from his philosophy, which, though hostile to existing conditions of society, is so ethereal, so imbued with love for everything n.o.ble, and yet so abstract and impracticable, that it is not likely to do much harm.

Keats poured forth with great power the dreams of his immature youth, and died in the belief that the radiant forms had been seen in vain. In native felicity of poetic adornment these two were the first minds of their time, but the inadequacy of their performance to their poetic faculties shows how needful to the production of effective poetry is a substratum of solid thought, of practical sense, and of manly and extensive sympathy.

If we would apprehend the fullness and firmness of the powers of Sh.e.l.ley (1792-1822) without remaining ignorant of his weakness, we might study the lyrical drama of "Prometheus Unbound," a marvelous galaxy of dazzling images and wildly touching sentiments, or the "Alastor," a scene in which the melancholy quiet of solitude is visited but by the despairing poet who lies down to die. We find here, instead of sympathy with ordinary and universal feelings, warmth for the abstract and unreal, or, when the poet's own unrest prompts, as in the "Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples," a strain of lamentation which sounds like a pa.s.sionate sigh.

Instead of clearness of thinking, we find an indistinctness which sometimes amounts to the unintelligible. In the "Revolt of Islam," his most ambitious poem, it is often difficult to apprehend even the outlines of the story.

No youthful poet ever exhibited more thorough possession of those faculties that are the foundation of genius than Keats (1798-1820), and it is impossible to say what he might have been had he lived to become acquainted with himself and with mankind. It was said of his "Endymion"