m MEMOmAJA J::n:.: s::ett Jj ti ^ia:> 3-". S . *%■. \ SHORT COURS'E IN LITERA.TURE rnslish and taaiitan* BY JOHN S. HART, LL.D., PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN THE COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY. PHILADELPHIA: ELDREDGE & BROTHER, No. 17 North Seventh Street. 1873. A SERIES OF TEXT-BOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ' , BY JOHN S. HART, LL.D. Pirst Lessons in Composition. Composition and Khetoric. A Short Course in Literature. And for Colleges and Higher Institutions of Learning ; A Manual of English Literature. A Manual of American Literature. '3c^V — "^j Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by ^ j ELDREDGE & BROTHER, i V in the OflSce of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. w 3W 'K^^- >i^ J. FAGAN & SON, fS'^Sm , ELECTROTYPERS, PHILAP'A. ^^^^ i CAXTON press op SHERMAN k CO. Preface. rpHE present volume is in the main an abridgment -*- of two larger works by the same author, one on Eno^lish Literature, the other on American Literature. In many schools, it is found impracticable to devote to the subject of Literature the amount of time needed to master the two volumes named, and yet it is thought best not to omit the study altogether. For the accom- modation of such schools this compend has been pre- pared. In using it, great advantage will arise from having copies of the larger works accessible to the scholars, as well as to the teachers, for the purpose of reference. 543457 i ► Part I. ENGLISH LITERATURE. PAGE INTRODUCTION, 17 CHAPTER I. English before Chaucer. The Brut of Layamon, ......... 19 The Ormulum, ......... 20 The Ancren Riwie, Robert of Gloucester, . . . . . .21 Robert of Brunne, Metrical Romance, ...... 22 CHAPTER II. Chaucer and his Contemporaries. Chaucer, ........... 23 Gower, Piers Plowman, ........ 25 Wyckliffe, 26 Mandeville, .......... 27 CHAPTER III. Early Scotch Poets. Barbour, Wyntouu, . . ... . . • . .28 James I., .......... 29 Blind Harry. ITcnryson, Dunbar, . . . . . , . 30 Gawin Douglas, . . . . / . . . . . 31 Liiulsay, ........... 32 1* V VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. The Age before Spenser. PAGE Caxton, Sir Thomas More, Skelton, Latimer, ..... 34 Wyatt, Surrey, .......... 35 Tuaser, .......... 36 CHAPTER V. Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, and their Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ........ 37 SECTION I. — Spenser and Contemporary Poets. Sidney, ........... 39 Raleigh, .......... 40 Sackville, Southwell, ......... 41 Daniel, brayton, Fairfax, ........ 42 Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Herbert, ....... 43 SECTION II. — Shakespeare and the Early Dramatists. Rise of the English Drama, ....... 43 Marlowe, Shakespeare, ......... 46 Ben Jonson, ..... ^. .... 47 Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, . ...... 48 Shirley and Others, ......... 49 SECTION III. — Bacon and Contemporary Prose Writers. Bacon, ........... 49 Roger Ascham, . . . . . ..... 50 Burton, Sir Richard Baker, Hakluyt, Fox the Martyrologist, . . .51 Hooker, 52 CHAPTER VI. The English Bible and other Public Stand- ards of Faith and Worship. I. The English Bible. 1. Wyckliffe's Version ; 2. Tyndale's Version, . . . .54 3. Coverdale's Version ; 4. Matthew's Version ; 5. The Great Bible, . 55 i CONTENTS. Vll 6. The Geneva Version ; 7. The Bishops' Bible, 8. The Kheinis-Duuay Version, 9. King James's Version, . . ' . IT. The English Prayer Book, in. Thk Shorter Catixhism, IV. ExcLiSH Hymxody. Steruhohl and Ilupkins, Tate and Brady, Rouse Watts's Psalms and llyinns, Wesleyan Hymns, , Successors to Watts and Wesley, s Psalms, . . 61 G2 CHAPTER VII. Milton and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ........ 63 SECTION I. —The Poets. Milton, .......... 63 Waller, Cowley, Wither, . . . , . . ' . .67 Ilerrick, Suckling, Butler, Other Poets, ...... 68 SECTION II. — Political and Miscellaneous. Clarendon, Prynne, ......... 69 Ilobbes, Sir Thomas Browne, ....... 70 Bishop Wilkins, Izaak Walton, . . . . , , .71 SECTION III. — Theological \Vriters. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Hall, Usher, ...... 72 Fuller, Pearson, Ciulworth, ........ 73 Barrow, Howe, Baxter, ........ 74 Owen, Bunyan, .......... 75 CHAPTER VIII. Dryden and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ........ 77 SECTION I.— The Poets. Dryden, . . . . . . . . . . .77 Roscommon, .......... 78 Dorset, Dramatic Writers, . . . . . . , .79 Vlll CONTENTS. SECTION II. — Philosophical and Miscellaneous. PAGE Locke, ........... 79 Boyle, 80 Temple, Evelyn, .......... 81 SECTION III.— Theological Writers. Tillotson, .......... 81 South, Stillingfleet, Beveridge, Bishop Ken, Matthew Henry, . . .82 SECTION IV. — Early Friends. George Fox, Barclay, William Penn, . CHAPTER IX. Pope and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, . . . . . . . . 85 SECTION I.— The Poets. Pope, . . . . . . . . . . • . 85 Prior, Gay, Philips, . . ./ 87 Parnell, Thomson, Blair, ........ 88 SECTION II.— The Dramatists. Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, ..... 89 Jeremy Collier, .......... 90 SECTION III.— The Prose Writers. Addison, .......... 90 Steele, ........... 91 Swift, ........... 92 Arbuthnot, Shaftesbury, ........ 93 Bolingbroke, Atterbury, ........ 94 Berkeley, .......... 95 Bentley, Boyle, ......... 96 Middloton, De Foe, Wollaston, ....... 97 Hutchinson, Ilutcheson, Hartley, Whiston, Bailey, Ephraim Chambers, . 98 SECTION IV. —Theological Writers. Butler, Leslie, Stackhouse, ........ 99 Doddridge, Leland, Ridgley, Neal, Boston, ..... 100 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER X. Dr. Johnson and his Contemporaries. PAGE Introductory Remarks, ........ 101 SECTION I. — Miscellaneous Prose Writers. Dr. Johnson, ......•••• 101 Burke, 103 Chesterfield, Junius — Sir Philip Francis, . . . . • .105 Hume, 106 Gibbon, Robertson, Kames, ........ 107 Harris, Tyrwhitt, Lyttelton, ....... 108 Elizabeth Carter, Lady Montagu, Elizabeth Montague, .... 109 SECTION II.— The Novelists. Richardson, Fielding, ........ 110 Smollett, Sterne, Ill SECTION III. — The Poets. Goldsmith, 112 Gray, Collins, 113 Shenstone, Akenside, Ramsay, Young, Falconer, Mrs. Steele, . . . 114 Chatterton, .......... 115 SECTION IV. —Theological Writers. Warburton, Lowth, Hervey, Law, ....... 116 Newton, Cruden, Lardner, ....... 117 Bishop Challoner, Alban Butler, ....... 118 CHAPTER XL Cowper and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ........ 119 SECTION I. —The Poets. Cowper, ........... 120 J. Newton, Darwin, ........ 121 Beattie, Burns, .......... 122 Grahame, Mrs. luchbald, ........ 123 SECTION II. —The Dramatists. Sheridan, 123 Garrick, Foote, Hume, ........ 124 : CONTENTS. SECTION III. — Miscellaneous Prose Writers. PAGE Hannah More, Madame D'Arblay, . 125 Dr. Burncy, ....... 126 Mrs. Radcliffe, Mackenzie, Paine, . 127 Godwin, Adum Siuitli, ..... 128 Paley, . . 12» Keid, Adam Ferguson, ..... 130 Blair, Campbell, Ilorne Tooke, . 131 Warton, Sir William Jones, .... 132 Bishop Percy, Walker, . 133 Lindley Murray, ...... 134 SECTION IV. —Theological Writers. The Wesleys, Whitefield, ........ 135 Toplady, McKnight, Milner, . . . . . . .136 Newcome, Watson, ♦....».,. 137 CHAPTER XII. Sir ^Valter Scott and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ........ 138 SECTION I. — The Poets. Byron, . . . . . . . . . . . 138 Moore, Shelley, . . . . . . . . ,140 Keats, Kirke, White, 141 Campl)ell, Rogers, ......... 142 Suuthey, ........... 143 Coleridge, .......... 144 Joanna Baillie, Mrs. Hemans, ........ 145 Elizabeth Landon, Crabbe, ........ 146 Heber, Hogg, Bloomfield, ........ 147 Pollok, . . . , 148 SECTION II. -The Novelists. Sir Walter Scott .......... 148 Maria Edgeworth, ......... 150 Miss Austen, Jane Porter, Lady Blessington, ...... 151 SECTION III. — Reviewers and Political Writers. GifFord, Mackintosh, ......... 152 Hazlitt, Canning, Cobbett, 163 ► CONTENTS. XI SECTION IV. — Philosophical and Scientific. PAGE Diigald Stewart, .......•• 15'^ Brown, Abercrombie, Dymond, Bentham, ...... 155 Matthews, Ricardo, .....••• .156 SECTION v. — Religious and Theological. Scott the Commentator, ......... 156 Robert Hall, Legh Richmond, .157 SECTION VI. — Miscellaneous. Mrs. Barbauld, ........•• 158 Dr. Aikin, Lamb, Roscoe, ......•• 159 Mitford, Gillies, 160 CHAPTER XIII. ^Vordsworth and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ......... 161 SECTION I. —The Poets. Wordsworth, . . . . . . . . . .161 Keble, 163 Croly, Ebenezer Elliott, . .164 Barham, Hood, Iluok, ......... 165 J. Montgomery, R. Montgomery, Barton, T. H. Bayly, .... 166 SECTION II.— Novelists. Miss Mitford, Mrs. Opie, Lady Morgan, ...... 167 Marryat, Borrow, ......... 168 Charlotte Bronte and Sisters, ........ 169 SECTION III. — Literature, Politics, and Science. Sydney Smith, 169 Jeffrey, Brougham, ......... 170 Wilson, 171 De Quincey, .......... 172 Lockhart, Landor, ......... 173 Foster, Hallani, Hugh Miller, . . . . . . . .174 SECTION IV. — Religion and Theology. Chalmers, Bridgewater Treatises, ....... 175 Tracts for the Times, Essays and Reviews, ...... 176 Isaac Taylor, Mrs. Sherwood, . . . . . . .177 XU CONTENTS. SECTION V. — History and Biography. PAGE Lingard, Sir Archibald Alison, ....... 178 Sharon Turner, Lord Campbell, . ...... 179 SECTION VI. — Miscellaneous. Arnold of Rugby, 179 Matthew Arnold, Archibald Alison, ...... 180 CHAPTER XIV. Tennyson and his Contemporaries. Introductory Remarks, ......... 181 SECTION I. — The Poets. Tennyson, .......... 181 Robert and Elizabeth Browning, ....... 183 Mrs. Norton, .......... 184 Barry Cornwall, Adelaide Procter, P. J. Bailey, Aytoun, .... 185 Bonar, Bickersteth, Charlotte Elliott, Jean Ingelow, Morris, . . . 186 SECTION II.— The Novelists. Dickens, ........... 187 Thackeray, .......... 189 Bulwer-Lytton, .......... 190 Disraeli — Father and Son, . . . . . . . . 191 Trollope — Mother and Sons, ........ 192 Charles Reade, Mayne Reid, ........ 193 Kingsley, Hughes, Lever, ........ 194 Lover, Warren, James, . . . . . . . . 195 Collins, " George Eliot," Mrs. Gaskill, Miss Mulock, Miss Youge, . . . 196 SECTION II. — Literature and Politics. Carlyle, 197 Raskin, Max MUller, ......... 198 0. C. Lewis, Latham, Craik, J. S. Mill, ...... 199 Gladstone, Derby, Jerrold, Mrs. Jameson, ...... 200 SECTION IV. — Philosophy and Science. Hamilton, Buckle, ......... 201 Spencer, Lecky, Argyle, ......... 202 Brewster, Whewell, Darwin, ........ 203 Owen, Lyell, Tyndale, ......... 204 SECTION v. — History and Biography. Miuaulay, .......... 205 <>'i'>t". ........... 20fi I'rniiilo. Merivalo, Milman, A. Strickland, ..... 207 K.njilak*', Helps, 208 ( CONTENTS. XIU SECTION VL — Theological and Religious. PAGE Newman, .......... 208 Wiseniau, Manning, Pusey, . . . ... . . .209 Colenso, Seeley, Robertson, ........ 210 Whately, Faber, Home, .,...'.,.. 211 Trench, Alford, 212 SECTION VII. — Miscellaneous. William and Mary Hewitt, ........ 213 Robert and William Chambers, Crabb Robinson, Richardson, . . . 214 Smith's Dictionaries, Russell, the Times Correspondent, .... 215 The London Times, . . . . , . . . .216 Other Journals, .......... 217 Part II AMERICAN LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION 219 CHAPTER I. i The Early Colonial Period Whitaker's Good Newes, Sandys's Ovid, . • . Vaughau's Golden Fleece, Wood's New England's Prospect, First Printing Press, Bay Psalm Book, John Cotton, T. Shepard, . Roger Williams, Eliot, Anne Bradstreet, .... Richard Mather, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, . President Blair, Col. W. Byrd, J. Logan, T. Chalkley, . J. Woolman, C. Golden, S. Johnson, President Clap, . Presidents Dickinson, Burr, Edw^ards, and Davies, 220 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 CHAPTER 11. The Revolutionary Period. Introductory Remarks, ....•••• 227 Franklin, Washington, John Adams, ....•• 228 Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Jay, ...•••• 229 Witherspoon, F. Hopkinson, Brackenridge, ..... 230 Trumbull, Barlow, Dwight, Ames, , . . . • • .231 Ramsay, . * . . . . . • • • .232 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. From 1800 to 1830. PAGE Introductory Remarks, R. T. Paine, Fessenden, . . . , . 233 J. Ilopkinson, Key, VV'oodworth, Drake, Brown, Wirt, Wilson, . , 234 Audubon, N. Webster, Kent, ........ 235 Story, Marshall, 236 CHAPTER IV. From 1830 to 1850. Introductory Remarks, ......... 237 SECTION I. — The Poets. Poe, . 237 Halleck, Dana, Pierpoiit, Percival, J. H. Payne, Sprague, . . . .238 Mrs. Osgood, Hannah F. Gould, Mrs. Shindler, ..... 239 SECTION II. — Novelists, etc. Cooper, ........... 239 Miss Sedgwick, Miss Mcintosh, J. P. Kennedy, . . . . . 240 Paulding, Sanderson, J. C. Neal, J. Neal, . . . . . .241 Hoffman, Willis, Morris, Miss Leslie, ...... 242 Mrs. Kirkland, Mrs. Child, Mrs. Judson, Mrs. Haven, .... 243 Mrs. Heutz, .......... 244 SECTION III. — History and Biography. Irving, ........... 244 Sparks, Palfrey, Stone, Ingersoll, Guyarre, Allen, .... 245 SECTION IV. — Literature and Criticism. Emerson, ........... 246 M. Fuller, H. B. Wallace, Reed, Verplanck, Griswold, .... 247 SECTION V. — Political Writers. Alexander and Edward Everett, D. Webster, . . . . . 24S J. Q. Adams, Burton, Clay, Calhoun, ...... -4^ Legare, Choate, Wheaton, Lieber, ....... -''>0 SECTION VI. —Scientific Writers. Silliman, Olmsted, Henry, Bache, Dunglison, . . . . .251 Hitchcock, Kane, Worcester, ........ 252 Marsh, Anthon, Rush, ........ 253 SECTION VII. —Theological Writers. Archibald Alexander, ......... 253 James and Addison Alexander, , . . . . . . 254 CONTENTS. XV PAGB Miller, Barnes, Breckinridge, ........ 256 Cox, Thornwell, Sprague, J. Jones, L. Beecher, ..... 257 Moses Stuart, Ed. Robiuson, Upham, Bethune, Channing, .... 258 Furness, Parker, Potter, Doaue, Turner, ...... 259 Wayland, Alexander Campbell, . . . . . . . 2C0 SECTION VIII. —Miscellaneous Writers. Mrs. Sigourney, ......... 260 Mrs. Willard, Mrs. Phelps, Mrs. Oilman, . . . . . .201 Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Tuthill, President Quincy, ..... 262 Mann, Schoolcraft, Downing, Gallaudet, Goodrich, . . . _ . 263 CHAPTER V. From 1850 to the Present Time. Introductory Remarks, ........ 265 SECTION I.— The Poets. Longfellow, .......... 265 Whitticr, 267 Bryant, Boker, .......... 268 Read, Saxe, Holland, 269 Fields, Street, Fla^h, Mrs. Preston, . . . . . . .270 Alice and Phoebe C;ut, Mrs. Kinney, . . . . . . 271 Randolph, Bret Hiirte, Joaquin Miller, . . . . . .272 SECTION II. — Literature and Criticism. Lowell, .......... 272 Tuckernian, Whipple, Kate Field, Tyler, R. G. White, . . . .273 Duyckinck, AUibono, ........ 274 Davidson, ........... 275 SECTION III. — Magazinists. Holmes, Parton, . . . ... . . . . 275 Mrs. Parton, Abigail Podge, ........ 276 Curtis, IIowclls, Higginson, Trowbridge, ...... 277 Gen. Hill . .278 SECTION IV. —Journalists. Bennett, Greeley, Raymond, . . . . . . . 278 Hurlbut, ........... 279 Godkin, Godwin, Thompson, ....... 280 Prentice, Ripley, Dana, Biddle, McMichael, Forney, ..... 281 Mackenzie, Townsend, Reid, ....... 282 New York Associated Press, Egglestou, Prime, Tilton. .... 283 XVI CONTENTS. SECTION V. — Humorists. PAGS Artemus Ward, ......... 283 Mark Twain, Mrs. Partington, Josh Billings, Leland, .... 284 Jack Downing, Bagby, Longstreet, ...... 285 SECTION VI. — Miscellaneous. Bayard Taylor, .......... 285 Strother, Sargent, Giles, La Borde, ...... 286 Barnard, Ogdeu, "Wickersham, Swinton, ...... 287 Alden, ........... 288 SECTION VII. — Novelists. Hawthorne, Winthrop, ......... 288 Thoreau, Dana, Mitchell, Kimball, Gilmore, Sinims, .... 289 J. E. and Ph. P. Cooke, Bird, Peterson, Melville, ..... 290 Ai'thur, Adams, J. Abbott, ........ 291 J. S. C. Abbott, Stowe, Warners, . . . . . . .292 Ritchie, Lippincott, Spofford, Alcott, Dickinson, Smith, .... 293 Chesebro, Holmes, Tcrhune, Wilson, Lee, Whitney, ..... 294 Baker, Sadlier, ......... 295 SECTION VIII. —Historians. Prescott, Bancroft, ......... 295 Ticknor, Motley, Kirk, Pollard, . . . . . . .296 Shea, Thomas, Ellet, ......... 297 Lossing, . . . . . . . . . . . 298 SECTION IX. — Politics and Political Economy. Carey, Sumner, Stephens ........ 298 Helper, ........... 299 SECTION X.— Scientific. Agassiz, Guyot, ......... 299 Maury, Steele, B. Brooks, Whitney, Bledsoe, . . . . .300 Chase, Stuart, N. C. Brooks, McGuffey, Newell, Crcery, ... 301 SECTION XI.— Theological. Hodge, ........ McCosh, Porter, Boardman, ..... Jacobus, Shedd, Cuyler, Lewis, ..... Plumer, Smyth, Scott, ..... Krauth, SchaflF, Bcechcr, Chadbourne, Peabody, Hackett, Samson, Eddy, McClintock, Stevens, Whedon, Challen, Milligan, Mcllvaiuo, Odenheimer, Stone, Tyng, Keni-ick, ..... Spalding, Bay ley, Hughes, England, Brownson, 301 302 2C3 304 . 307 Part I. English Literature. INTRODUCTION. English Literature, strictly speaking, does not mean the litera- ture of England. There have been in England several successive races, each having a literature of its own. The old C^lts, still represented by the Welsh in the west of England, had a literature, rather extensive too, which is no more English than the Hebrew is. The Anglo-Saxons, through a period of several centuries, culminating in the time of Alfred the Great, had a literature, some of it of a high order. This, though nearer to the English than any of the others are, though indeed the parent of the English, is not itself English ; it is Anglo-Saxon. The Normans, who settled in England in the twelfth century, brought with them a noble literature. But it was Norman-French, not English. The ecclesiastics of the English Church, from the second century, possibly from the first, down to the time of the Reformation, and even a little later, had among them a literature of their own, which is very copious, and some of it of a high order. But it is Church-Latin, not English. A literature is named, not from the soil on which it thrives, but from the language in which it is written. As Latin literature is that written in the Latin language, as Greek literature is that written in the Greek language, so English Literature is that written in the English language. 2 * B 17 ,16 ' £N':^l.ISH LITERATURE. "What it Iacl;adfe^.— It includes works written by Americans, as Av il a •■ Jiose writteR by Eiiiglishmen. It includes the works even of loreigners, provided those works are written in the English language. How Divided. — For convenience of treatment, however, the subject is divided into two parts. The works in English written in England and its dependencies are considered under the head of English Liter- ature ; the works in English written in the United States are consid- ered under the head of American Literature. Point of Beginning. — To fix a precise point when English Litera- ture may be said to have begun, we must first ascertain how far back the English Language goes. Beginning of the Language. — In one sense, Language, being in a constant state of transition, has no beginning — none, that is, which may be traced to some precise point in historical times. And yet, if we follow any language from its present condition back through suc- cessive changes, we find, after a while, that the documents which appear in it are no longer intelligible to ordinary readers. The stream is lost. We are obliged, therefore, for convenience of treatment, to assume a point, somewhat arbitrarily, where each language, in its present form, may be said to begin. Happily, in the case of the Eng- lish language, historical events have defined this point more sharply than is the case with most languages. The Saxons in England main- tained their language comparatively unimpaired until the coming of the Normans, a. d. 1066. For one or two centuries after the com- ing of the Normans, a sharp conflict took place, not only between the two races, but also between the two languages. The final result was a mixed race and a mixed language — predominantly Saxon, but with a large Norman element. The mixed language resulting from the Conquest, neither pure Saxon, such as Alfred spoke and wrote, still less pure Norman-FEench, such as William and his barons spoke, is our English. The Precise Point. — In a change so gradual and continuous as that of the transition of a language from its ancient form to its modern form, it is not easy, as already stated, to fix a precise point where the language ceases to be one, and becomes clearly the other. But, in the case of the English, The date, A. d. 1200, may be assumed as a convenient dividing line between the old language and the new. Documents written much earlier than that are either Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, -according to the birth and the proclivities of the writer ; documents later than that, become soon unmistakably English. ► CHAPTER I. Enqlish before Chaucer. (1200-1350.) Eecognizing the language as being English from and after the beginning of the thirteenth century, the first author in chronological order that claims attention is a Chronicler by the name of Layamon. The Brut of Layamon. The work of Layamon is called Brut, or more fully, Brutus of Eng- land. It is a chronicle of British affairs, from the arrival of Brutus, an imaginary son of JEneas of Troy, to the death of King Cadwalader, A. D. 689. Origin of the Legend. — Among the old Britons there had grown up a most extraordinary mass of legends in regard to the early history of the race. The great object of patriotic ambition with them seemed to be to trace the origin of their race back to ancient Troy. This floating mass of traditionary legends had been collected by some Celtic hand, and woven, with all possible gravity, into a formal history of Britain, tracing its line of monarchs back, in regular succession, to Brutus, an imaginary son of iEneas of Troy. Brutus settled in Britain, as ^Eneas did in Italy. Such was the tradition. Geoffrey of Monmouth. — An English monk, Geoffrey of Monmouth, translated into Latin this Welsh Chronicle, now lost. Geoffrey called his book Historia Britonnm, A History of the Britons. As history it is worthless. It forms, however, an important link in the history of English literature, the materials of a large number of the earliest works that exist, both in English and in Norman-French, having been drawn from this crude mass of fictions, misnamed history. Layamon' s Chronicle. — Layamon's Chronicle, Brutus of England, is in the main a translation of a Chronicle of the same name, "Brut d'Angleterre," by Wace, a Norman-French poet, who took the story from Geoffrey of Monmouth. 19 20 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Of Layamon himself we know nothing, except what he himself tells us, which is very little. He tells us that he was a priest, and that he resided at Ernley, near Eedstone, in Worcestershire ; and he seems to say that he was employed there in the services of the church. Date of the Chronicle. — The composition of the Chronicle, Brutus of England, has, fi'om internal evidence, been assigned to the beginning of the thirteenth century, — not later, probably, than the year 1205. Versij&cation of the Chronicle. — The French Chronicle which Lay- amon followed was in eight-syllable rhyming couplets. Layamon's Brutus sometimes rhymes ; as, — Kinges — theines — velde — thinges — sweines — seelde. Occasionally also it runs into regular octo-syllabics ; as, Summe heo gunnen lepen, Summe heo driven balles. On the whole, it would seem that Layamon, for his versification, either loUowed some system of his own, dependent upon artifices which, at this distance, we cannot appreciate, — which, at any rate, we have not yet discovered, — or, which is probable, that he had no system of verse, but simply broke up his matter into short lines, like the original which he was translating, and that in so doing, he occasionally adopted both its metre and its rhyme. Linguistic Value of the Chronicle. — The Linguistic value of Laya- mon's Brutus is very great. The Chronicle is considerable in amount, numbering 32,250 lines ; and it shows us the condition of the language in that interesting and curious transition stage, about midway between the pure old Saxon and the established modern English. The Ormulum. The Ormulum is so called from its author, Orm, as he himself says, in the opening couplet : This b6c is nemmed Ormulum, Forthy that Orm it wrote. Subject of the Ormulum. — The Ormulum is a series of Homilies, the subjects of the homilies being those portions of the New Testament appointed to be read in the daily mass service of the church. Date of the Ormulum. — The Ormulum was written somewhere in the early part of the thirteenth century, a little later than the Brutus of Layamon, perhaps about the year 1 220. ENGLISH BEFORE CHAUCER. 21 Diction of the Ormulum. — The Ormnlum, like the Brutus of Laya- mon, has almost no Norman-French words. It shows the language in that state in which the old Saxon inflections are nearly gone, the grammatical structure being almost identical with modern English, but foreign words have not yet begun to intrude themselves. Versification of the Ormulum. — The verse, in the Ormulum, does not rhyme, but it is metrical throughout, and consists of couplets, arranged in lines alternately of eight syllables and seven syllables. Thus: I Now broth! er Waltler, broth|er min, — I After I the flesh ies kindle. It is a peculiar and not unpleasing form of blank verse. The Aneren Ri^A^le. The title, Aneren Rhvle, means "Anchoresses' Eule," — Aneren being the abbreviated form of the old genitive " Ancrena," and Biwle being the old spelling for " Kule." Object of the Work. — The Aneren Kiwle is a treatise on the duties of the monastic life, written by an ecclesiastic, apparently one in high authority, for the direction of tliree ladies, to whom it is addressed, and who, with their domestic servants, or lay sisters, formed the entire community of a religious house. Date of the Work. — The composition of the Aneren Eiwle is re- ferred to the same date as the Ormulum, possibly a little later. The year 1225 is given as a probable conjecture. It is interesting as an extended specimen of prose of the same period with the two poetical works already noticed. Robert of Gloucester. At the distance of nearly a century from Layamon, is a rhyming Chronicler, Robert of Gloucester. All we know of him is that he was a monk of Gloucester Abbey, and as he alludes to events which oc- curred in 1297, he must have written, or at least finished, his Chronicle after that date. Subject. — Robert of Gloilcester's Chronicle is a versified history of Britisli affliirs, from the imaginary Brutus of Troy down to the death of Henry III., A. d. 1272. Its Versification. — This Chronicle is written for the most part in Alexandrine metre, or iambic twelve-syllable rhyming couplets. Its Diction. — The language shows great advance from the documriiui 22 ENGLISH LITERATURE. previously described, and requires almost no cliange to be intelligible to the modern reader. Robert of Brunne. At the distance of nearly half a century from Kobert of Gloucester, is Kobert Manning, generally called, from his birthplace, Robert of Brunne. His Chronicle was finished in the year 1338. Further Particulars. — Robert of Brunne's Chronicle gives a rhyming history of England from Brutus of Troy down to the death of Edward I., A. D. 1307. The first part, from Brutus to Cadwalader, a. d. 689, is a translation of Wace's Brutus, and is, like it, in eight-syllable rhyming couplets. The remaining portion is a translation from a contemporary Norman-French chronicle, and is, like the original, in Alexandrian, or twelve-syllable rhyming couplets. It shows some advance, both in language and in poetical merit, upon its predecessors. Metrical Romance. The essential feature of the Metrical Romance was a tale of love and adventure, told in verse. Origin of the Romance. — Metrical romances were first brought into England by the Normans. Works of this kind were immensely pop- ular, both in France and England. At length, when the governing race in England began to use the language of their adopted country, similar romances in English were composed for their amusement. These were imitations or translations from the Norman-French, and so little did the translators contribute to them of their own invention, that the names even of the authors have not come down to us. Period of the Metrical Romance. — The Metrical Romance began as early as A.D. 1200, about the time of Layamon's Brutus. It flour- ished to some extent during the thirteenth century, but the time of its greatest ascendency was in the fourteenth. After A, d. 1400, it began to wane, and finally it gave way to the prose romance, and then disappeared altogether for more than three liundred years, when it was for a time quickened into new life, though in a different form, by Sir Walter Scott. The Most Celebrated. — The names of some of the most celebrated of these Romances are Sir Tristram, King Horn, Sir Havelock, Sir Guy, The Squire of Low Degree, King Robert of Sicily, King Alisan- der. The King of Tars, The Death of Arthur, The Soudan of Damas- cus, etc. CHAPTER 11. Chaucer and his Contkmporaries. (13B0-1400.) The foiirteentli century is celebrated in English annals by the long and successful reign of Edward III., and by the military glories of his son, Edward the Black Prince, achieved in the famous battles of Crecy and Poitiers, in France. Civil and Religious Discontents. — Before the close of the century, also, serious discontents arose among the common people on account of the oppressions of the government, and the first distinct protest was uttered against the irregularities of the religious orders. In regard both to civil and religious liberty, there was a noteworthy struggle, and many of the reforms in both, which took effect two centuries later, are distinctly traceable to the efforts put forth, and the opinions expressed, in this stirring period. Writers of the Period. — The fourteenth century has a few names of note in the history of English literature. These are Chaucer, Gower, Piers Plowman, Wyckliffe, and Sir John Mandeville. Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer, 1328-1400, is our first great poet, — so incompar- ably great, as to all that went before, that he is distinctively called the Father of English Poetry. Personal History. — The personal history of Chaucer is involved in no little obscurity. Neither the place nor the date of his birth is cer- tainly known, though an early tradition asserts that he was born in London, and the probabilities are in favor of the commonly received date of 1328, as that of his birth. His writings give abundant proof that he was liberally educated, and both the great Universities claim him. Even on this point, however, there is no certainty, though there 23 24 ENGLISH LITERATURE. is a fair probability in the conjecture that, according to a custom much prevalent at that time, he began his studies in one University and fin- islied them in the other, as there is also in the supposition that he spent some time in study abroad at the University of Paris. Social Position. — Chaucer evidently belonged to a good family, and his connections through life were with people of rank and quality. He lived in stirring times, being contemporary with Wyckliffe, John of Gaunt, the great Duke of Lancaster, Edward III., the invader of France, and his son the Black Prince, the hero of Crecy and Poitiers. Chaucer was himself in the army that invaded France, and was taken prisoner. He held at different times various offices of honor and emolument, and tlie few authentic records of him that we have show that he was on terms of intimacy with the highest nobility in the kingdom. Marriage. — Chaucer was by marriage closely connected with John of Gaunt, who was, for a long time, second only to the King himself, and whose son, Henry of Bolingbroke, during Chaucer's life, succeeded to the throne under the title of Henry IV. Chaucer's wife was maid of honor to the Queen, and Chaucer himself was valet to the King. Political and Religious Afl&nities. — Chaucer's writings show him to have been in sympatliy with Wyckliffe and the Lancastrians, in their resistance to the encroachments of the Roman hierarchy. He does not indeed enter into the political and religious questions of the time as a disputant, but the sketches of character which he gives show plainly enough where his sympathies lie. Those who are painted as models of excellence, like the Good Parson, belong to the national party in the ecclesiastical hierarchy; while those who are held up to ridicule, like the Friar and the Sumpnour, belong to the class whose ecclesiastical connection was with Rome rather than with England. Chaucer's principal work, The Canterbury Tales, is believed to have been written late in life, after the age of sixty, though it is probable that one at least of the Tales, and that the longest one in the collection, had been written earlier as a separate performance. Plan of the Work. — According to the plot of this celebrated work, the poet represents himself as bent on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas a Becket, at Canterbury. At the Tabard Inn, in Southwark, he meets with nine-and-twenty other pilgrims, all bound on the same errand. To beguile the tedium of the way, they agree that each shall tell a tale, both going and returning. Hence the name, ** The Canter- bury Tales." Structure of the Work. — In his Prologue, which is itself no incon- siderable poem, Chaucer describes each of his fellow travellers, and in CHAUCER AND HIS CON"TEMPOR A RIES. 25 these descriptions has given a series of portraits that are unequalled of their kind in English literature. In the art of word-painting, these portraits have never been surpassed. They constitute a picture gal- lery, of which the great English race may well be proud, as a monu- ment of art which can never decay, and which can never be stolen by Vandal invaders. The gay cavalcade having set out, the narration of the tales is interspersed with amusing incidents of the journey. Each tale is in keeping with the supposed character of the narrator ; and as each is taken from some walk in life different from the others, the whole together form a moving panorama of Irfe and manners in the fourteenth century. Probably of no country in the world, except per- haps Arabia and Palestine in the time of the Patriarchs, have we such a lively picture as Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales, has given us of the England of Wyckliffe and Edward III. Gower. John Gower, 1320 (?)-1408, the contemporary and friend of Chau- cer, was not equal to the latter in genius, or in the influence which he exerted on English literature. He was far, however, from lacking either genius or influence, and his name is constantly coupled with that of Chaucer in all the earlier authors or writers who have written of either. Rank as a Poet. — Tlie term " moral," applied to him originally by Chaucer, has stuck to Gower ever since, and is supposed to convey the idea that he was more concerned for the moral correctness of his writ- ings than for their elegance or taste. Certain it is, that he lacks those qualities of imagination, fancy, and humor, which mark so strongly his great contemporary. Besides some smaller poems, Gower wrote three large works, Specu- lum Meditantis (The Mirror of Meditation), in French ; Vox Clamant.is (Tiie Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness), in Latin ; and (hnfessio Amautis (The Confessions of a Lover), in English. Coufessio Amantis. — This, being in English, is the work by which Gower is chiefly known. It is of immoderate length, — extending to more than 30,000 lines. It was once much read, though few would now undertake so formidable a task. Piers Plowman. Another work of great celebrity and value, belonging to this ])eriod of our literary history, is one commonly known as Pkrs Ploumcm. It 3 26 ENGLISH LITERATURE. was completed about the same time as The Canterbury Tales, but is in many respects in striking contrast with that great work. Piers Plowman is an allegorical and satirical poem, in the form of a series of visions, or dissolving views, in which the various characters and occupations of men pass under review. The Name. — So little is known of the author of this work, that in referring to it, or quoting from it, writers more frequently speak of Piers Plowman, which is the name commonly given to the poem, than of Langland, which was probably the name of the author. The full and proper title of this work is, The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman. History of the Author. — William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman, appears to have been born about 1332, and to have died about the year 1400. Pie was born in moderate circumstances, but was sent to school, and acquired some knowledge of books. He was not, however, an accomplished scholar, like Chaucer and Wyckliffe, nor did he move like them in the higher circles of social life. He saw life rather among the poor and lowly, and is to be accepted as the true interpreter of their thoughts and feelings. Form of the Poem. — The old Saxon poetry had a form peculiar to itself. It was neither metrical, like the classic poetry, nor rhyming, like the modern, but was distinguished by a peculiar consonantal allit- eration. The lines had no fixed length, but had usually about four- teen syllables, and were divided into two distinct parts about the end of the eighth syllable ; and the words were so selected and arranged that at least two leading words in the first section, and at least one word in the second section, began with the same letter. Thus : Ac now is religion a rider, !j a roainer about, A Zeader of /ovc-days, ij and a /ond-buyer. Sometimes printed thus : Ac now is religion a rider, A reamer about, A /eader of Zove-days, And a /ond- buyer. But in the old manuscript copies, it is always found written in the long lines, with a mark of some kind to show the division into sections. \A^yekliffe. John Wyckliffe, 1324-1384, known among Protestants as "The Morning Star of the Reformation," may almost be styled also the Father of English Prose, as his contemporary, Cliaucer, is the Father CHAUCER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 27 of English Poetry. Wyckliife was at least one of the earliest writers who in plain and vigorous prose addressed the common people in words familiar to the hearths and homes of England. Wyckliife wrote many treatises : some learned, addressed to scholars and the higher orders, and some in homely phrase, addressed to the common people. But his chief literary work was A Translation of the Holy Bible. The First English Version. — Separate portions of the Holy Scrip- tures had been translated into English before this time. But Wyck- liffe's was the first translation of the whole Bible into English. It was completed in 1382, and revised in 1388. Character of the Version. — WycklifFe's translation was made directly from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Hebrew and Greek. It is extremely literal, and is marked by great homeliness of style, stu- diously avoiding the language of scholars and of courtly people. Influence. — WycklifFe's Version was much used in his own day, and for some generations following, and it had great influence both upon English speech and religious opinions. Moreover, the movement which it inaugurated led finally, in a later day, to the formation of the Ver- sion now in common use. Mandeville. Sir John Mandeville, 1300-1372, is the earliest notable instance of the genuine English Traveller, "The Bruce of the fourteenth century." His Travels. — Mandeville left home at the age of twenty-seven, and travelled for thirty-four years, going first to Jerusalem, and then on eastward into the remotest parts of Asia. On returning, he wrote a book describing some of the marvellous things that he had seen. His Book. — Tliis book of Voyage and Travel was written by him at first in Latin, then in French, then in English. It was translated into Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and German. Books of travel were not so common then as they are now, and this work of Mandeville's, giving an account by an eye-witness of remote regions and nations, the very existence of which was almost unknown among the people of Europe, was read with the greatest avidity. With the credulity of the age, he embodied in his work every grandam tale that came in his way ; yet, on the whole, he is worthy of credit wlien describing what came under his own observation. It is not uncommon to find him in one page giving a sensible account of something which he saw, and in the next repeat- ing with equal seriousness the story of Gog and Magog, and of men with tails, or the account of the Madagascar bird which could carry elephants through the air. The work is interesting as one of the earliest specimens of English prose. CHAPTER III. Early Scotch Poets. (1400-1500.) From the time of Chaucer, for a period of nearly two centuries, the succession of minstrels and poets seems to have been limited to the northern part of the island, nearly all the poetical writers of any note in this period being Scotchmen. ' These early Scotch poets are Barbour, Wyntoun, James I, of Scot- land, Blind Harry, Henry son, Dunbar, Gawin Douglas, and Lindsay. Barbour. John Barbour, 1320 (?)-1396, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, and a con- temporary of Chaucer's, was a poet of considerable note. Barbour wrote two extended poems. The Brute, a metrical chron- icle, tracing the Scottish kings back to Brutus of Troy, and The Bruce, recounting the warlike deeds of the Scottish hero, Robert Bruce. Character of The Bruce. — Barbour calls The Bruce a Romaunt. By this we are not to understand that the work is a fiction, but that the deeds of the hero are in themselves romantic. Barbour's work, though in verse, is an important historical document, being a metrical chron- icle of the great Scottish hero, written soon after his death, and while the facts were still fresh in the minds of all. It is indeed a complete history of the memorable transactions by which Robert I. asserted the independence of Scotland ; at the same time, it has no little of poetic fire and of rhythmical harmony. The poem consists of more than 12,500 lines, of which more than 2,000 are occupied with the battle of Bannockburn. Wyntoun. Andrew Wyntoun, 1350 (?)-1430 (?), Prior of St. Serfs, Lochleven, wrote a Chronicle of Scotland. 28 EARLY SCOTCH POETS. 29 Character of the Chronicle. — Wyntoun's Chronicle, more ambitious than those founded upon the Brutus of Troy, gives the story of the Scotch kings, in regular descent, from the birth of Cain ! It is in eight-syllable rhyming couplets. Though far inferior to the Bruce of Barbour, it is not without its value, both as a specimen of the language, and as a representative of ancient manners and ideas. The later por- tions of the Chronicle also are of considerable value as an historical record. James I. of Scotland. James I. of Scotland, 1395-1437, was a poet of no little worth and consideration, and was the first of the Scottish poets whose writings show signs of the influence of Chaucer. James was the author of The King's Quhair [Quire or Book], and perhaps also of some other poems, the authorship of which is disputed. History of James. — James, while yet a boy of ten, was taken captive by the English monarch, and kept for nineteen years in captivity in England. He was there instructed in all the polite learning and ac- complishments of the age, and appears to have been particularly con- versant with the writings of Chaucer. While living in Windsor Castle, a prisoner of state, he met with a characteristic incident, which is the subject of his chief poem, already named. The royal prisoner, now in the prime of manhood, glowing with honorable sentiments, and ex- cluded from the means of giving them expression, sees from his palace- prison a fair and noble lady walking in the adjacent garden. He becomes enamored of the lady, and writes the poem in her honor. James's End. — This graceful and polished monarch was suited to a more advanced stage of civilization than that which prevailed in Scot- land in the fifteenth century. Though not lacking in strength or courage, he was unequal to the task of curbing those fierce Scottish nobles, by a party of whom he was finally assassinated in 1437, at the age of forty-two. When the assassins were trying to break into his apartments, a staple or bar being wanted to fasten the door, Catherine Douglas, a. lady attendant upon the queen, thrust her arm into the bolt-hole, and so kept it, until the limb was entirely crushed by the bloody miscreants. The queen herself rushed between them and the object of their vengeance, vainly endeavoring to receive upon her own person the multiplied wounds that were inflicted upon his. Such was the end of the ill-fated James. He was a true poet and a true man. He deserved well of woman's love, and he was rewarded with a true and heroic constancy. 3* 30 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Blind ;^arry. Henry the Minstrel, or Blind Harry, a wandering Scotch minstrel, was the author of a poem called Sir William Wallace, in twelve books, supposed to have been written about the year 1470. Character. — As a poet, Blind Harry cannot be rated very high, and his Wallace was supposed at one time to be untrustworthy in its nar- rative ; but recent investigations have shown that its author must have been in possession of valuable authentic materials. Many incidents unknown to other Scottish authors are corroborated by English an- nalists and by records published only recently. Henryson. Robert Henryson was an early Scottish poet of some celebrity, of whose personal history little is known except that he was schoolmaster at Dunfermline, and that he died before 1508. Henryson' s Works. — Henryson wrote The Testament of Fair Cre- seide, as a sequel to Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide ; and a translation of jEsop's Fables. One of these fables, The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, is often referred to for its humor and spirit. Dunbar. William Dunbar, 1465-1530, is the most illustrious of Scotch poets, except Scott and Burns. Prof Craik calls Dunbar " The Chaucer of Scotland," and Sir Walter Scott pronounces him to be, without excep- tion, " a poet unrivalled by any that Scotland has ever produced." Dunbar's History. — Dunbar was educated at the University of St. Andrew's, and-became a friar of the Franciscan Order, In this capac- ity he spent several years as a travelling preacher, living on the alms of the pious, through Scotland, England, and France. He was also employed on various occasions in conducting negotiations for King James IV. with foreign courts, and in this capacity he visited Germany, Spain, and Italy, as well as France and England. By these means he acquired a knowledge of men and of affairs which aided him in the composition of his works. His Works. — Dunbar was master of almost every kind of verse. His poems are divided into three classes: The Allegorical, the Moral, and the Comic. His chief allegorical poem is The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins through Hell. One of the best specimens of his Moral pieces is The Merle and the Nightingale, in which these two rival songsters debate in alternate stanzas the merits of Earthlv and lleav- EARLY SCOTCH POETS. 31 enly Love. Of the Comic pieces, the most famous is The Souter and the Tailor, an imaginary tournament between a shoemaker and a tailor, in the same region where the Seven Deadly Sins held their dance. Gawin Douglas. Gawin Douglas, 1475-1522, Bishop of Dunkeld, has the special honor of being the first to translate into English verse any ancient classicj Greek or Latin. Douglas translated Virgil's ^neid in an elegant and scholarly man- ner, and wrote several original poems possessing considerable merit. History. — Gawin, or Gavin, Douglas was soft of Archibald, fifth Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat. Unlike most of the members of that fierce and haughty family, Gawin was trained to letters instead of arms. He studied at the University of Paris, entered the church, and rose to the bishopric. He was noted in that rude age for his re- finement and scholarly tastes. Sir Walter Scott, in one of the most striking scenes in Marmion, has drawn a beautiful picture of Gawin Douglas. It is the celebrated mid- night scene in the chapel of Tantallon Tower : "A Bishop by the altar stood, A noble lord of Douglas blood, With mitre sheen, and rocquet white. Yet showed his meek and thoughtful eye But little pride of prelacy ; More pleased that, in a barbarous age, He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, Than that beneath his rule he held The bishopric of fair Dunkeld. Beside him ancient Angus stood, Doffed his furred gown, and sable hood; O'er his huge form, and visage pale, He wore a cap and shirt of mail ; And leaned his large and wrinkled hand Upon the huge and sweeping brand Which wont of yore, in battle fray, His foeman's limbs to shred away, As wood-knife lops the sapling spray. He seemed as, from the tombs around, Rising at judgment-day, Some giant Douglas may be found In all his old array; So pale his face, so huge his limb. So old his arms, his look so grim." 32 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Lindsay. Sir David Lindsay, 1490-1555, a satiric poet, and a fit successor to Dunbar and Gawin Douglas, closes the line of early Scotch poets. History. — Lindsay's personal history, as well as his poetry, is inti- mately mingled with the afiairs of the Scottish Court, and particularly with those of his sovereign, James V. While James was a boy, Lind- say was his attendant, carver, cup-bearer, purse-master, chief-cubicular, in short his man Friday, bearing the little fellow on his back, and dancing antics for his amusement. James, on coming to the throne, did not forget the poet, but gave him the valuable office of King-at-arms. His Poetry. — Lindsay's poems are entirely satirical, and have many of the characteristics of Dunbar's satires. Like Dunbar, Lindsay was vituperative and wanting in refinement, yet bold, vigorous, and biting. The chief objects of his satire were the clergy, whom he lashed with- out mercy, (fne of his pieces, The Play of the Three Estates, is a pungent satire upon the three great political orders — monarch, barons, and clergy. Strange to say, it was acted before the Court. CHAPTER IV. The Age before Spenser, (isoo-isso.) The authors brought together in the present Chapter are in the main connected with the long and memorable reign of Henry VIII., 1509-1547, or the first half of the sixteenth century. This period is known in general history as the age of the Refor- mation. The great names most conspicuously associated with it are Henry VIII., Francis I., Charles V., Leo X., Michael Angelo, Raphael, Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Wolsey, More, and Cranmer. The Art of Printing. — The invention of the art of printing, about the middle of the fifteenth century, gave a new impulse to authorship, as to every other art and enterprise. Effect of Printing on Authorship. — The writings of Chaucer, Wyck- liffe, and other early authors, were in a certain sense published among their contemporaries. That is, copies of these works were made and cir- culated in manuscript by friends and admirers, and were read to select circles in the halls of the nobility and the gentry, at stalls in churches and monasteries, at fairs and other public places, or by stealth at the private meetings of guilds and sectaries. To such an extent a book was published. But publication, in the sense of the word now under- stood, was first made possi})le by the invention of the art of printing, and it has added enormously to the growth of authorship. So great has been the effect of this and of other causes upon the matter of authorship, that more works are now produced in English in a single year than all that e?:isted in the language from the earliest times down to the time of the invention of the art of printing. The few authors and works enumerated in the preceding chapters include all of any value down to the time of Caxton, the first English printer. From his time, books grew apace. C 33 34 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Caxton. William Caxton, 1412-1492, the first English printer, like all the early printers, was himself a man of learning, and wrote many of the works which he printed. Most of them were translations. Sir Thomas More. Sir Thomas More, 1480-1535, Lord High Chancellor of England, was, next to Erasmus and Cardinal Wolsey, the most conspicuous and shining character in the reign of Henry VIII. He was a man of wonderful versatility as well as force of genius, being equally distin- guished as a statesman, a man of lively wit, a scholar, and a devout Christian. Works. — More wrote many works, mostly of a controversial kind. The only work by v/hich he is now known is The Utopia. The Utopia. - This word, derived from the Greek oi, {not) and rdTrof (place), and meaning literally " Nowhere," is the name given by Sir Thomas More to an imaginary island which he feigns to have been discovered by one of the companions of Amerigo Vespucci. This island is made the scene of Sir Thomas's famous political romance. Here he pictures a commonwealth in which all the laws and all the customs of society are wise and good. Skelton. John Skelton, 1460-1529, was a poet of some note in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII. Erasmus styled him " the light and orna- ment of English letters." Although this encomium is plainly undeserved, it yet shows that Skelton must have had abilities above the common order. History. — Skelton studied at Cambridge, and afterwards took orders in the Church. He was made poet-laureate, but wore the crown with little pretension to dignity or grace. He had much reputation for learning and wit, and was tutor to the young Duke of York, after- wards Henry VIII. His works are not very numerous, and to a modem reader not very attractive. The cliief of them are A Dirge on Philip Sparrow, and Why Come Ye Not to Court, the latter a satire on Cardinal Wolsey. Latimer. Hugh Latimer, 1472-1555, a* Bishop o£ the English Church in the time of Henry VIII., was celebrated beyond all the English Re- formers for his pulpit eloquence. THE AGE BEFORE SPENSER. 35 Latimer's Sermons have been published in 2 vols., 8vo. They are remarkable for a familiarity and drollery of style, which would hardly be tolerated in polite congregations now, though it was very popular, and produced a powerful impression then. Wyatt. Sir Thomas Wyatt, 1503-1542, was an accomplished diplomatist and statesman in the reign of Henry VIII. Wyatt is also favorably known as a poet. His Career. — Wyatt entered Cambridge at a very early age, was graduated, and, through strong family influence, rose high in Court favor under Henry VIII. During the stormy time between the out- break of the Reformation and the peace of Augsburg, Wyatt was am- bassador for two years at the Court of Charles V. of Germany. Once or twice under a cloud, he finally died high in the King's favor. His Poetry. — Wyatt, like so many of the statesmen of that day, also cultivated the muses. He was an accomplished cavalier and a writer of verses after the approved fashion. He is generally classed with Surrey, and their poems have often been published in the same volume. Wyatt's love-poetry is tender and graceful, but somewhat spoiled by the conceits of his Italian models. His satires are more idiomatic and more spirited. Surrey. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 1516-1547, one of the brilliant ornaments of the reign of Henry VIII., is distinguished in letters by his Sonnets and Songs, and especially by his being the first writer of Blank Verse in English. His Career. — Surrey studied at Oxford ; in 1535 he married Lady Frances Vere ; he served in the wars of Henry VIII. against France ; fell into disfavor, and, in 1547, was beheaded upon the absurd charge of high treason. His Poetry. — Surrey was the composer of a number of songs and sonnets, which have appeared in many editions. His sonnets are mostly dedicated to "The Fair Geraldine," the daughter of Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare. Besides these original poems, Surrey translated the first and fourth books of Virgil in " strange metre.'* This "strange metre" is blank verse, — its first appearance in Eng- lish literature. 36 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Tusser. Thomas Tusser, 1523-1580, is one of the earliest English didactic poets. Tusser was born at Rivenhall, Essex, and " was successively musi- cian, schoolmaster, serving -man, husbandman, grazier, poet, more skilful in all than thriving in any vocation," Fuller. He wrote A Hundred Good Points of Husbandry, being a practical treatise^ in rhyme, on farming. CHAPTER V. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon, and their Contemporaries. (1S50-162S.) The writers who are brought together in the present Chapter flour- ished during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., or from 1550 to 1625, They have been arranged into three Sections, under the heads severally of Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon were to some extent contemporary. Yet there was in each case a perceptible interval of at least fifteen years. Spenser was at his meridian about 1595, Shakespeare about 1610, and Bacon about 1625. A still greater separation was produced by their diflerent associations and habits of living. The dramatists of that day formed, to a great extent, a class by themselves, living mostly at taverns, and having little social intercourse with those in the higher circles. Spenser, on the other hand, and other poets of his class, were mostly connected with the higher orders, either as members or as retainers of some noble family, and were under influences very diflerent from those which prevailed among the dramatists. The period included in this Chapter is known in history as the secondary stage of the Reformation. Among the great events of the period are the Spanish Armada, and the rise of the Dutch Republic. Among its great names are Elizabeth, and her two leading counsellors, Cecil and Walsingham, Mary Queen of Scots, Philip II. of Spain, the Dukes of Alva and Parma, Henry of Navarre, Conde, Coligny, and William the Silent. I. SPENSER AND CONTEMPORARV POETS. The authors described in this Section are in the main associated with the time of the poet Spenser, and with the reign of Queen Eliz^ abeth, 1558-1603, or the latter half of the sixteenth century. 4 37 38 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Spenser. Edmund Spenser, 1553-1599, is the next great name in English literature after that of Chaucer. His principal work. The Fairy Queen, is one of the chief treasures of the language. This poem adds an undying lustre to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It is of itself suf- ficient to make any age famous. Early Career. — Spenser was born in London, in humble circum- stances. He was educated at Cambridge. After leaving the Univer- sity in 1576, at the age of twenty -three, he spent two years in the north of England. At the end of that time, he returned to London, and published in 1579 his first volume. The Shepherd's Calendar. This is a pastoral poem, in twelve eclogues, modelled to some extent after the eclogues of Virgil. Connection with Sidney and Leicester. — About this time Spenser made the acquaintance of Sir Philip Sidney, and of Sidney's uncle, the powerful Earl of Leicester, -and thenceforward the fortunes of the poet are mixed up a good deal with the affairs of that illustrious family. Through this source he obtained, in 1580, the appointment of secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and some grants in connection with it of considerable pecuniary value. In 1586, he received from the Crown, through the interposition, it is supposed, of Sir Philip Sidney, a grant of three thousand acres of land in Ireland, being part of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Desmond. Connection with Raleigh. — While Spenser was living at Kilcolman Castle, on his Irish estates, he received a visit from Sir Walter Raleigh, who had obtained from the Crown ten thousand acres of the same for- feited estates. During this visit, Spenser read to Raleigh so much of the Fairy Queen as was then written, namely, the first three books. By the advice of Raleigh, Spenser went forthwith to London, and published these three books, in the beginning of 1590. The reception of the work was enthusiastic. It was peculiarly adapted to the stately solemnities of the age and court of Queen Elizabeth, and it brought the author not only immediate fame, but a substantial pension from the Queen. His Misfortunes and Death. — The Englishmen, Raleigh, Spenser, and others, who had been put in possession of the forfeited estates of the Irish rebels, were necessarily odious to the Irish peasantry. This irritation became at length so great, that in 1598 it broke out into open insurrection. The insurgents attacked Kilcolman Castle, plun- dered, and set fire to it. Spenser and his wife escaped, but a new-born infant perished in the flames. He took refuge in London, and there, SPENSER AND CONTEMPORARY POETS. 39 after a few months of painful anxiety, died, at the age of forty-five. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Plan of the Fairy Queen. —Spenser's chief work. The Fairy Queen, was left unfinished. His plan contemplated twelve Books, each Book composed of twelve Cantos. Only six Books were completed. The poem is of the allegorical kind. Each book has a story and a hero of its own, with a series of connected adventures, all intended to illus- trate some one great moral virtue. Besides the heroes and heroines of the several books, there is one superior hero, Prince Arthur, who intervenes in each book, to rescue its particular hero in his extremity. This common hero represents Magnificence, or the embodiment of all human excellence, and is in the end to be united to the Queen, Glo- riana ; in other words, heroism is to be glorified. Character of his Poetry. — As a scene-painter, Spenser is unrivalled. No poem in the language, no poem probably in any language, equals the Fairy Queen in the number, variety, and gorgeous vsplendor of its scenes. The author's power of invention seems exhaustless, and he fairly revels in the never-ending pictures of bewildering enchantment which come at his bidding. From the very luxuriance of his imagi- nation, however, he often forgets himself, and loses the thread of his story ; and he lacks the exactness of thought which marks the work of that other great prince of dreamers, John Bunyan. His Versification. — As a versifier, Spenser is wonderful for the freedom, variety, and sweetness of his rhythms. His words come pouring forth in an endless tide of song. His marvellous facility in versifying, however, made him careless; and he lacks accordingly something of that perfect finish in his rhythms which is to be found in some other masters of song. The stanza used in the Fairy Queen is one invented by the author, and is known as the Spenserian Stanza. This stanza has been much used by later poets, particularly by Byron. Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney, 1554-1586, was one of the special ornaments of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was possessed by nature, not only of high talents, but of a certain nobleness of disposition which made him the object of almost universal admiration. His Education. — Sidney's education was ordered with the greatest care ; and being connected by birth and alliance with the most distin- guished families in the kingdom, he had no lack of opportunities for displaying his extraordinary abilities to the best advantage. He at- tended for a time at Oxford, and then at Cambridge, and afterwards went abroad for the purpose of study, in connection with travel. 40 ENGLISH LITERATURE. The Arcadia. — The Arcadia is a sort of philosophical romance. It was for a time almost universally popular, but has since fallen into general neglect. The Defence of Poesie. — The other principal prose work of Sidney is Tiie Defence of Poesie. It has received the commendation of the highest critics, and is still occasionally read. Though Avritten in a style now antiquated, it is in some respects to this day the best argu- ment extant on the subject of which it treats. Military Career. — Sidney's great ambition was to be distinguished as a soldier. He obtained a command in the war then going on in Holland, but his career was brought to a speedy termination. He was mortally wounded in the battle of Zutphen, and after lingering for a few days, died in the arms of his wife, October 7, 15S6, in the thirty- third year of his age. His Character. — Sidney was the intimate friend and patron of Spenser, and in his character and life was the actual embodiment of this great poet's ideal. The extraordinary hold which he had upon the minds of his contemporaries can be accounted for only by suppos- ing him to have been gifted to an unusual degree with those ennobling qualities which Spenser has shadowed forth in Sir Calidore, or The Legend of Courtesy. Sidney was indeed distinguished even as an author: but his main distinction grew out of his character as a man ; — as one who could be a graceful courtier without duplicity, a man of fashion without frivolity, a warrior and a hero without loss of rank in the Court of the Muses ; one who was successful in almost every walk of honorable enterprise without incurring the envy or the reproach of his competitors ; one, in whom the most ordinary affairs of life became invested, in the eyes of his countrymen, with some peculiar fitness — whose every sentiment was a melody — whose every act was rhythmical — whose whole life indeed was one continued poem. '* He trod from his cradle to his grave amid incense and flowers, and he died in a dream of glory." Raleigh. Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618, is famous as a courtier, an adven- turer, and a writer. Early Career. — Raleigh was born in Devonshire, studied at Oxford, served as a volunteer in France and the Netherlands on the Huguenot side for a number of years, and afterwards in Ireland, during Des- mond's rebellion. He attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth, as tradition has it, by laying down his cloak as an impromptu carpet for SPENSER AND CONTEMPORARY POETS. 41 her majesty over a muddy place. Be this as it may, Kaleigh became one of the royal favorites, was knighted, and appointed to various high and lucrative offices in the kingdom. How Regarded by his Contemporaries. — He was looked upon as the flower of courtesy in an age when court life was the prominent phase of English society ; he was, for the times, an accomplished scholar, a bold adventurer, a lover of the muses, and a friend of the poet Spenser, who honored him with one of his sweetest sonnets. Ealeigh is thus the type of the England of the sixteenth century, — bold, hasty, gal- lant, not over-scrupulous in the choice of means, but genial in manners, and, with all its faults, full of life and character. Literary Merits. — Kaleigh just fell short of becoming a fine lyric poet. His greatest work is one in prose. The History of the World, which, however, is brought down only to the end of the Macedonian Empire. Although, of course, superseded in matters of fact by later works, it is regarded as a model of style, and the pioneer of the great English school of historical writers. Sackville. Thomas Sackville, 1536-1608, Earl of Dorset, and Lord High Treasurer of England, was a man of note in letters, as well as in affairs of state. The Mirrour for Magistrates. — In 1557, Sackville formed the design of a poem, entitled The Mirrour for Magistrates, of which he wrote only The Induction, and one Legend, that on the life of Henry Staf- ford, Duke of Buckingham. Plan of the Poem. — In imitation of Dante and some others of his predecessors, Sackville lays the scene of his poem in the infernal re- gions, to which he descends under the guidance of an allegorical per- sonage named Sorrow. It was his object to make all the great persons of English history, from the Conquest downwards, pass here in review, and each tell his own story, as a warning to existing statesmen. Southwell. Robert Southwell, 1560-1595, one of the minor poets of the time of Elizabeth, is remembered with melancholy interest on account of his tragical end. Career. — Southwell was born of Catholic parents, who sent him, when very young, to be educated at the English college at Douay, and from thence to Rome, where, at the age of sixteen, he entered tlie Society of the Jesuits. At the age of twenty-foui' he returned to his 4* 42 ENGLISH LITERATURE. native country as a missionary, notwitlistanding a law which threat- ened with death all members of his profession who should be found in England. In 1592, he was apprehended in a gentleman's house, and committed to a dungeon in the Tower, After an imprisonment of three years, he was executed at Tyburn, with all the revolting circumstances of cruelty characteristic of the old treason law of England. Through- out these scenes, Southwell is said to have behaved with a mild forti- tude, which was the strongest commentary on his purity of character. The life of Southwell was short, but full of grief; and the prevailing tone of his poetry is that of religious resignation. His Poetry. — Southwell's two longest poems, St. Peter's Complaint, and Mary Magdalena's Tears, were written in prison. Though com- posed while he was suffering cruel persecution, no trace of angry feeling occurs in them against any human being or institution. South- well's poems were for a time exceedingly popular ; after that, they fell for a long time into neglect. They have risen again in public esti- mation in the present day, a new and complete edition of them having appeared in 1856. Daniel. Samuel Daniel, 1562-1619, figured as a lyric poet, a dramatist, and a historian. Daniel was educated at Oxford, and became tutor to the Countess of Pembroke. He was associated in London with Shakespeare, Marlowe, Chapman, and others of that class, and towards the close of his life retired to a small farm in the country. Pie wrote many poems, and was in great favor among his contemporaries. Drayton. Michael Drayton, 1563-1631, was a voluminous poet of much celeb- rity in his time, though now little read. Chief Work. — Drayton's chief work was the Poly-Olbion, in thirty Songs or Cantos, and making 30,000 Alexandrian lines, rhyming in couplets. It is a topographical description of all the tracts, rivers, mountains, and forests of Great Britain, intermixed with local tradi- tions and antiquities. In other words, it is the antiquities of Britain, expressed in verse. As a book of antiquities, it is said to be remarkable for its accuracy and for the minuteness of its information, and it is not devoid of poetry. Edward Fairfax, 1632, is well known as the translator of Tasso. SHAKESPEARE AND EARLY DRAMATISTS. 43 Giles and Phineas Fletcher. Giles Fletcher, 1588-1623, and Phineas Fletcher, 1584-1650, broth- ers, were poets of a kindred stamp, and were much alike in their characters and pursuits. Both were educated at Eton and Cambridge ; both were clergymen ; both are in good estimation for poetry of a quiet, but pure and ele- vating character. They were cousins of John Fletcher, the Dramatist, the associate of Beaumont. Giles Fletcher's chief poem is entitled Christ's Victory and Triumph in Heaven and Earth over and after Death. The description which he gives of the first meeting between Christ and the Tempter is sup- posed to have suggested to Milton some of the scenes in his Paradise Regained. Phineas Fletcher's chief work was The Purple Island. This was an allegorical poem, after the style of Spenser, the "Island" being the human body, its streams being the veins and arteries, and the moral and mental faculties of the soul being the actors or heroes. Herbert. George Herbert, 1593-1632, a thoughtful and quiet poet of this period, was the author of two poems, The Temple, and The Country Parson, which have given him a permanent place in literature. Herbert was of a noble family, being a younger brother of Lord Edward Herbert of Cherbury ; was educated at Westminster School and at Cambridge, and took orders in the Church of England. He seems to have led the quiet, retired life of a country divine, and to have been governed by a spirit of unaffected piety. II. SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARLY DRAMATISTS. Rise of the English Drama. Miracle Plays. — At the dawn of modern civilization, most Euro- pean countries had a rude kind of theatrical entertainment, known as Miracle Plays, or Miracles. These plays were representations of the principal supernatural events of the Old and New Testaments, and of the lives of the saints. The Miracle Plays did not undertake to exhibit natural characters and incidents, like the classic dramas of Greece and Eome, but to set forth Scriptural and religious transactions. In the absence of print- 44 ENGLISH LITERATURE. ing, they were one means of making known some of the contents of the Scriptures, and they were thought to be favorable to the diffusion of religious feeling. They were under the management of the clergy, and were acted by men of the clerical order. They were generally acted in church, and often on Sunday. Traces of these Miracle Plays in England may be found as far back as the Norman Conquest, in the twelfth century ; possibly a little earlier. Moral Plays. — The Miracle Plays were succeeded by a somewhat higher sort of drama, called Moral Plays, or Moralities, In the Moral Plays persons were introduced representing abstract ideas and moral sentiments, such as Mercy, Justice, Truth, and so on. The only Scriptural character retained in them is the Devil, who is represented in grotesque habiliments, and who is perpetually beaten by an at- tendant character, called The Vice. The Moral Plays at first were acted by clergymen, or by school-boys, and sometimes by members of guilds and trading corporations. Acting had not yet become a distinct profession. The Moral Plays were introduced about the time of Henry VI., say the middle of the fifteenth century, and were continued into the reign of I^enry VIII., or nearly to the middle of the sixteenth century. Interludes. — The next step in the development of the drama was a kind of plays called Interludes. The Interludes were a species of farce. They were introduced in the time of Henry VIII., at which time also acting began to be a distinct profession. In the Interludes, allegorical characters and abstractions also began to give way to characters taken from real life. The Regular Drama. — The regular drama began in England near the close of the reign of Henry VIIL, and about the middle of the sixteenth century. The regular dramas, though growing out of the theatrical entertain- ments which had preceded, were formed after the old classical models, and also after those of Spain and Italy, all of which had now begun to be studied by dramatic writers in England. The regular dramas were from the first divided into Comedies and Tragedies, and were in five acts. The first regular Comedy of which we have any record was Ealph Royster Doyster. It was written by Nicholas Udall, Master of West- minster School, about the year 1551. The scene is in London, and the characters, thirteen in number, represent the manners of the middle orders of the people of that day. Another early Comedy, called Misogonus, was written about 1560, by Thomas Richards. The scene is laid in Italy, but the manners are English. The character of the domestic Fool, which figures so largely in the old Comedy, appears for the first time in tliis play. SHAKESPEARE AND EARLY DRAMATISTS. 45 The comedy of Gammer Gurton's Needle was written about 1565, by John Still, afterwards Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity, and Bishop of Bath and Wells. It is a piece of low rustix; humor, turning upon the loss and recovery of the needle with which Gammer (god- mother, or granny) Gurton was mending a garment belonging to her man Hodge. The earliest known Tragedy in English was Ferrex and Porrex. It was written by Thomas Sackville, afterwards Earl of Dorset, and was played before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, by members of the Inner Temple, in 1561. It is founded on early British story, and is full of blood and civil broils. The first English tragedy founded on a classical subject was Damon and P>i:hias. It was acted before Queen Elizabeth, at Oxford, in 1566. Rapid Growth of the Drama. — From the time of the regular plays just named, the drama may be considered as one of the established forms of English literature. Once established, its growth was rapid. Before the close of Elizabeth's reign it had attained a height and splendor which threw into the shade all other kinds of literary work. Even the Fairy Queen paled before the rising sun of the new Eliza- bethan Drama. Shakespeare, the greatest of English dramatists, rose from these humble beginnings at once into meridian splendor." Some few stars, however, are discernible in the early dawn preceding Shakespeare's rise. These will now be briefly noticed. JoHisr Lyly, 1553-1600, a dramatic writer of some note, was the author of nine plays, written mostly for Court entertainments, and performed by the scholars of St. Paul's. One of Lyjy's works, Euphues, or The Anatomy of Wit, exercised a most mischievous influ- ence upon the literature of the day, causing that general use of euphu- istic expressions which marks most of the writings of his contempo- raries and immediate successors. EoBEET Greene, 1560-1592, was one of the minor dramatists con- temporary with Shakespeare. Greene was educated at Cambridge, and took orders in the church, but lost his preferment, probably on account of the irregularities of his life. Besides his plays, Greene wrote a large number of tales and other prose pieces, some licentious and indecent, others full of repen- tance for his own misdeeds and serious exhortations to his fellows to avoid his example. One of liis tracts, A Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Kepentance, is often quoted for the light which it throws upon contemporary literature. 46 ENGLISH LITERATURE. George Peele, 1553-1598, after completing his studies at Oxford, came to London and became a writer and actor of plays, and a share- holder with Shakespeare and others in the Blackfriars Theatre. Peele also held the situation of city poet and conductor of pageants for the Court. Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe, 1562-1593, was the greatest of the precursors of Shakespeare. Marlowe was the son of a shoemaker in Canterbury. He received, however, a learned education, and was graduated at Cambridge. Marlowe's first play, Tamburlaine the Great, was written before his graduation. It was the first English play in blank verse, and the ver- sification has a peculiar majestic swell and sonorousness, which, though verging upon bombast, yet suggested and justified Ben Jonson's phrase of " Marlowe's mighty line." Marlowe's second play. The Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, ex- hibits a far wider and higher range of dramatic power tlian his first tragedy. The subject is the same as that of Goethe's most celebrated work, and many of the characters, Faust, Mephistopheles, Wagner, etc., appear in both works. Marlowe lived an irregular life, and died young, being killed in a miserable brawl. He was a man of uncommon genius, and was undoubtedly the greatest English dramatic writer before Shakespeare. Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, is, by the common consent of mankind, the greatest dramatist, and in the opinion of a large and growing number of critics, the greatest writer, that the world has ever produced. His writings created an era in literature, and constitute of themselves a special and most important study. His Life. — Our knowledge of the life of Shakespeare is very imper- fect, consisting of meagre and unsatisfactory outlines. All that we can say of him, on acceptable external evidence, is that he came of a good family in Stratford-upon-Avon, that his father was a butcher or a glover, and that his mother, Mary Arden, was slightly connected with the gentry. The poet received a school or academy education, and probably nothing more. In 1586, or 1587, he removed to London, being probably thrown upon his own resources by his father's failure in business. He had previously married Anne Hathaway, a woman several years his senior. She seems to have played absolutely no part SHAKESPEARE AND EARLY DRAMATISTS. 47 in determining the poet's life and genius. After establishing himself in London, he took up play-writing and acting as a profession, soon gained an interest in the Blackfriars Theatre, acquired the friendship and patronage of the Earl of Southampton, and retired to Stratford a wealthy man, for the last few years of his life. Such is the substance of all that we know about the life of England's greatest poet. His Works. — The plays known to be Shakespeare's are thirty-five in number, and are divided into Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. Besides his plays, we have his Sonnets, his Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, The Lover's Complaint, and Passionate Pilgrim. The first collective edition of Shakespeare's Plays appeared in 1623, and generally passes by the name of "The Folio of 1623." Ben Jonson. Ben Jonson, 1573-1637, was one of the greatest of the English dramatists, second to Shakespeare only, of whom he was a contempo- rary and a rival. Life. — Jonson was the son of a Protestant clergyman, who died a month before Ben was born. The current tradition is that the mother was married again, the stepfather being a bricklayer, and Ben him- self is said to have worked in making or laying brick. He was for a time a pupil of the fiimous Camden, at tlie Westminster school, and entered the University, though his stay tliere was less than a month. He turned soldier, and gained distinction in the army in the wars in the Low Countries. At the age of nineteen, or thereabouts, he entered fiilly upon the dramatic career, first as an actor, then as an assistant to otiier dramatists in the composition of plays, and finally as an original dramatist. Principal Plays. — The following are the titles of his principal Plays : Every Man in His Humor ; Every Man out of His Humor ; Sejanus, a Tragedy; Catiline, a Tragedy; and a large number of comedies, masques, and dramatic pieces of different kinds. Peculiarities as an Author. — Jonson was accurately versed in the Greek and Latin classics, and insisted strongly on giving to the English drama the classic forms, and he was disposed to be intolerant and con- temptuous of those writers who either were ignorant of Greek and Latin, or who for any reason disregarded the classic rules. He was a man of genius and wit, as well as scholarship, and he had among his contemporaries the familiar name of Rare Ben Jonson. The two tragedies which he wrote have high merit, but his comedies are re- garded as his best works. 48 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Beaumont and Fletcher. These two names have to be taken as indicating one poet rather tlian two, so intimate was their literary partnership. A few facts, however, may be stated separately of each. Fbancis Beaumont, 1585-1615, though the younger of the two, began his literary career before Fletcher, publishing a translation from Ovid, and writing the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, and minor Poems. He died young, at the age of thirty. John Fletcher, 1576-1625, though ten years older than his part- ner, was later in beginning authorship, and also survived him ten years. After the death of Beaumont, Fletcher brought out fourteen or fifteen plays, which are exclusively his own, except that in one of them he is said to have had assistance from Rowley. Fletcher wrote no undramatic pieces of any note. Their Partnership. — The literary partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher is one of the most curious things in literary history. Of good birth and high connections, and classically educated, at the ages respectively of twenty and thirty, in the year 1606, when the genius of Shakespeare was in its meridian splendor, and under the influence of its bewitching spell, these two young men, of kindred genius, were drawn together as joint laborers for ten consecutive years, during which they produced no less than thirty-seven or thirty-eight plays, which bear their joint name. Their Bank and Character. — The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher stand higher than those even of Ben Jonson, and, of all the dramatic writings of that day, come nearest to the magic circle which encloses Shakespeare. Their wonderful knowledge of stage effect doubtless helped their popularity. They catered also, to some extent, to the low taste of the age, by introducing licentious scenes and expressions, which exclude their plays both from the stage and from the domestic circle at the present day. George Chapman, 1557-1634, is chiefly known as being the first English translator of Homer. He wrote very copiously also for the stage, and enjoyed tlie friendship of the great dramatists of the day, Shakespeare and Jonson. His i)lays have pretty nearly passed into oblivion. His Homer, however, still survives, and is even now in good repute, and is preferred by many to tliat of Pope. The other dramatists, contemporary with, or immediately succeed- ing Shakespeare, are Thomas Middleton, 1626, John Marston, BACON AND PROSE WRITERS. 49 1634, Thomas Decker, 1638, Jolm Webster, , Philip Massinger, 1584-1640, and John Ford, 1586-1639. James Shirley, 1596-1666, was the last of the great school of dramatists of the Shakespearian era. He was born in London, and educated at Cambridge. He took orders in the church, but becoming a Catholic, resigned his position, and endeavored to establish himself as a classical teacher. Not succeeding in this, he began writing poems and plays. The ordinance of the Long Parliament, prohibiting the exhibition of stage-plays, obliged Shirley again to resort to school- teaching as a means of subsistence. Subsequently, however, he re- sumed liis chosen occupation as a dramatist, and produced a large number of plays. III. BACON AND CONTEMPORARY PROSE WRITERS. Bacon. Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam, 1561-1626, commonly known as Lord Bacon, was one of the greatest of modern philosophers. His Opportunities. — Bacon was gifted by nature with abilities of the highest order, and he had every advantage which education and high birth could bestow for giving his abilities development and exer- cise. His father held the highest office but one in the Court of Queen Elizabeth ; his mother was a woman of great natural abilities and genuine nobleness of character, as well as of profound scholarship ; his tutors were men of learning and genius ; the society in which he mingled from boyhood included all that was greatest and noblest in tiie kingdom- Bacon entered the University (Cambridge) at the age of twelve, was admitted to Gray's Inn as student of law at sixteen, and soon after went abroad for the purpose of perfecting himself in French and of studying foreign institutions. On the death of his father, in 1579, Bacon, then eighteen years of age, returned to England and applied himself to his legal studies. He rose rapidly in the profession; was elected to Parliament at the age of twenty-four, and continued to sit in every House of Commons until 1614, a period of twenty-nine years. Else to Power. — On the accession of James L, 1608, Bacon rose rapidly to the highest offices in the gift of the sovereign. Bacon was then at the age of forty-two. He married a lady of wealth in 1606, was made solicitor-general in 1607, one of the judges in 1611, and attorney -general in 1613, was appointed keeper of the great seal 6 D 60 ENGLISH LITERATURE. in 1617, and lord high chancellor in 1618. In the same year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Verulam, and in 1620 was made Vis- count St. Albans. His Fall. — Bacon's love of gold got the better of his nobler princi- l)les. Though in the receipt of a princely revenue from the fees of his office and from his professional services, he added still further to his income by taking direct bribes as a Judge and giving decisions ex- pressly for money. Bacon's downfall is one of the most lamentable in history. Not that he was worse than thousands of others in public position. But his transcendent greatness in other respects makes his meanness only the more damaging. His Works. — Bacon's works have been published in 17 vols., 8vo. The greatest of these is Instauratio Magna, the great instauration, or restoration, of the sciences. Part first of the Instauratio is De Aug- mentis Scientiarum, or of the advancement of learning. Part second is Novum Organum, the new instrument or method of pursuing the sciences, the term referring to Aristotle's method, called Organum. There are four other parts, the whole forming a grand outline of the possibilities of human knowledge and of the methods of discovery. His most popular work was a small volume of Essays, of which count- less editions have been sold. They were written in English, expressly for popular reading, and on topics which, in his own language, came home to the "business and bosoms" of all. He wrote also a collection of Apothegms, which has been very popular. Style. — Bacon has an aphoristic style of writing, which has been noticed by all critics. It occurs in the Novum Organum, as well as in the Essays. It gives the reader the idea of one who has meditated long upon what he has to say, until the truth about it has become per- fectly clear to his own mind, and then it is put forth, not in the shape of argument, or for discussion, but as so much fixed truth, to be re- ceived into the consciousness of the reader. No finer specimens of English prose are to be found than Bacon's Essays. Roger Aseham. Koger Aseham, 1515-1569, is famous as the tutor of Queen Elizabeth, and as the author of two admirable works, one on archery, Toxophilus, and one on education. The Schoolmaster. There is something very genial and pleasing in the tone and style of these works, which have made them great favorites. The "School- master" especially has been held in high esteem, not only for its BACON AND PROSE WRITERS.. 61 excellencies of style^ but for the many valuable ideas it contains on the subject of education, and for the interesting pictures it gives us of the state of education in those times. Robert Burton. Kobert Burton, 1576-1640, a quaint and learned writer, is known almost exclusively by his one work, The Anatomy of Melancholy. The Anatomy of Melancholy contains a vast amount of curious lore, and the book has been a general favorite among scholarly people, who had the learning and the leisure to follow him in his quiet and somewhat sombre musings. Sir Richard Baker. Sir Richard Baker, 1568-1645, has a place in literature on account of his famous Chronicles of the Kings of England. Baker's Chron- icle was about the only history that Englishmen had until the pub- lication of Kapin. The critics denounced it as unscholarly and inaccurate. But it was written in a pleasant, entertaining style, and it continued for a long time to be published and read, holding its place in the old-fashioned chimney-corners, on the same shelf with the Family Bible and Fox's Book of Martyrs. Addison, in his pic- ture of Sir Roger De Coverly, describes him as drawing " many ob- servations together, out of his reading of Baker's Chronicle." Hakluyt. Richard Hakluyt, 1553-1616, contributed to the literature of voy- ages and travels by the valuable collection which he published, com- monly known as Hakluyt's Voyages. Hakluyt was not a traveller himself, but merely a publisher of the travels of others. To his zeal and industry it is that we owe the preservation of many accounts of voyages that would otherwise have been lost. Hakluyt's Voyages contain an immense amount of information relative to the early set- tlement of America. John Fox. John Fox, 1517-1587, is familiarly known as The Martyrologist. Fox was educated at Oxford, where he attained high distinction for scholarship. His work was first published in one vol., fol. In sub- sequent editions, it was enlarged to 2 vols., and then to 3 vols., fol. The title, or rather the first part of it, as given by himself, was, Acts and Monuments of these Latter and Perilous Days, Touching Matters 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. of the Church. It is commonly known as Fox's Book of Martyrs. The book has had an enormous circulation, especially in its abridged forms, though it is no longer read as generally and devoutly as it once was. Richard Hooker. Kichard Hooker, 1553-1600, is the ablest advocate of the church orscanization of England that has yet appeared. Hooker's great work. The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, is an elaborate and dignified exposi- tion and defence of the ministry and ritual of the Church of England, and is an acknowledged classic on that subject. The style of his book has received universal and unqualified approbation, both for the ex- cellency of its English, and its entire suitableness to the subject. For the general soundness of his judgment, he has received the name of the judicious Hooker. CHAPTER VI. The English Bible, and Other Public Stand- ards OF Faith and Worship. (13SO-16BO.) No literary works in any language exert so great an influence on the speech, the thoughts, and the doings of men as those written documents which contain the popular, authorized expression of their religious belief and forms of worship. The Vedas in the Sanskrit and the Koran in the Arabic are the most important literary treasures in their respective languages. So in English, the Version of the Scriptures, the symbols of Faith, and the forms of Public Worship, which have been received and used for many generations by a large majority of English-speaking people, must, as mere literary treasures, be regarded as second to none wliich the lan- guage contains. In the present chapter, therefore, a brief account will be given of some of the most important of the works of this kind which exist in English. These are the following: 1. The English Bible, 2. The English Prayer-Book, 3. The Shorter Catechism, 4. English Hymnody. The movements which led to the production of these important works, cover a period of three centuries, from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth (1350-1650). I. THE ENGLISH BIBLE. Besides translations of particular portions of the Bible into English, some of which go back to a very early date, various Versions of the whole Bible have been made, beginning with that of Wycklifie, 1382, 5* 53 64 ENGLISH LITERATURE. and ending with that made in 1611, and commonly known as King James's, or the Authorized Version. Some account of these several Versions will now be given. 1. ^A7'yekliffe's Version. The first Version of the entire Bible in English was that made by Wyckliffe and his disciples. It was completed about the year 1382. Wyckliffe's Version was made from the Vulgate, not from the Greek and Hebrew. It is in plain and homely phraseology, and is a fine specimen of the prose English of the fourteenth century. It was cir- culated in manuscript, the art of printing having not yet been invented. After the completion of Wyckliffe's Version, an interval of a cen- tury and a half occurred before any further attempts were made in this direction. Early in the sixteenth century, in connection with the general religious reformation, the subject of an English version of the Scriptures was revived, and the work was carried on without in- terruption for three-fourths of a century. This movement began in the reign of Henry VIIL, and continued all through the reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, and finally culminated in the reign of James I. The originator of this movement, and the man who did singly more towards its accomplishment than any other one man, was William Tyndale. 2. Tyndale's Version. William Tyndale, 1480-1536, translated the New Testament, the Pentateuch and the other Historical Books of the Old Testament. His New Testament first appeared in 1525. The Version made by Tyn- dale was used to a large extent by all the subsequent Protestant trans- lators ; it is really the basis of our present version. There is in our present version more of Tyndale than of all the other translators put together. The chief characteristics of Tyndale's Version are these: 1. He translated directly from the Greek and Hebrew originals, not from the Latin Vulgate. 2. He adopted purposely the words and idioms of the common people, avoiding what were then called "ink-hom phrases," that is, modes of expression taken from books and men of learning, and not suited to the understanding of plain, unlettered people. This feature has been to a great extent perpetuated in our common version, and is one of its leading excellencies. 3. He trans- lated what are called the " ecclesiastical words." The Catholics and some of the Reformers maintained that, in translating the Scrip- THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 55 tures into any modern language, the "ecclesiastical words," instead of being translated, should be transferred, with only such changes of spelling as might be necessary. Tyndale, on the contrary, held that every word, the meaning of which was known, should be literally translated. Accordingly, for "grace" he said favor, for "penance" repentance, for " church " congregation, for " priests " seniors or elders, for " bishops " overseers, for " confessing " acknowledging, for " chal- ice " cup, and so on. S. Coverdale's Version. Miles Coverdale, 1487-1568, has the distinguished honor of being the first to give his countrymen the whole printed Bible in English. Coverdale's Bible was first printed on the continent, in 1535. Cover- dale's Version, though by no means equal to Tyndale' s, has considerable merit. In regard to the " ecclesiastical words," Coverdale pursued a middle and a vacillating course, sometimes translating, and sometimes transferring them. He translated, not from the originals, but from the Dutch and the Latin. 4. Matthe^A^'s Version. The Bible known as Matthew's was the first version in English that was regularly authorized by the King. It appeared in folio, in 1537, two years after that of Coverdale. It has been pretty well ascertained that the name Thomas Matthew, affixed to this version, is a fiction. The real author was John Rogers, commonly known as the " proto-martyr." History of the Work. — Rogers was a convert of Tyndale's, and had been associated with him in the work of translation. When Tyndale was put to death, Rogers continued and completed the work on which they had been laboring together. As the name of Rogers was associ- ated with that of Tyndale, and might have raised opposition in the mind of the King, the printers, in presenting the book for licensure, put in the title-page the convenient fiction of Tliomas Matthew. Such is the now commonly received opinion. The work in every part bears the strongest internal evidence of being in the main that of Tyndale, supplemented by his friend and disciple, John Rogers. 5. The Great Bible. The version known as the Great Bible first appeared in 1539. It was not a mere reprint of a previous version, but had features of its 66 ENGLISH LITERATUKE. own, giving it an original and independent character. In the follow- ing year, 1540, this Bible, without noticeable alteration, was reprinted, with a prologue by Cranmer. In this form, it is called, sometimes, the Great Bible, sometimes Cranmer's Bible. It was a stately folio, and was intended especially for use in churches. All churches and religious houses were required to have copies of it ; and no less than six large editions of it were printed in 1540 and 1541. This Bible was the Authorized Version of the English Church, from 1540 to 1568 (excepting the interval of Mary's reign). The Psalms and most of the other portions of Scripture found in the Prayer-Book were taken from this version, it being the one in use when the Prayer- Book was compiled. 6. The Geneva Version. The English Protestants resident at Geneva brought out in that city an English version of the Scriptures in 1560. This version is generally known as the Geneva Bible. The English refugees at Geneva were mostly Presbyterians. They were dissatisfied with Cranmer's Bible, partly on account of its expensiveness, which put it beyond the reach of common people, but chiefly on account of its sup- posed leaning towards Episcopacy. The G-eneva Version was, for the next sixty years, altogether the most popular version in England. No less than eighty editions of it were printed between 1560 and 1611, the time of the publication of the version made by order of King James. The Geneva Version even kept its ground for some considerable time after that event, and gave way only by slow degrees. Some of the reasons for this popu- larity were the following: 1. The translation was in itself, in many respects, an excellent one. 2. It was, like Tyndale's, comparatively free from " ink-horn phrases," and suited to popular reading. 3, It was, in all its editions, in a smaller and cheaper volume than the " Great Bible " of Cranmer. 4. It was the first English Bible that laid aside the obsolescent old black letter, and appeared in the com- mon Eoman type. 5, It was the first English Bible in which the text was broken up, as at present, into verses. 6. The "Notes,'^ explana- tory and homiletical, which accompanied the text, were highly es- teemed, and added greatly to its value in the eyes of the common people. 7. The .Bishops' Bible. Another version, or revision, commonly known as the Bishops' Bible, was projected by Archbishop Parker, and brought to completion THE ENGLISH BIBLE. 67 in 1568. The work was parcelled out hj the Archbishop to fifteen men having special eminence as Greek and Hebrew scholars, the re- sult of their labors being revised by the Archbishop himself. As a majority of the translators were Bishops, the version obtained the name of the Bishops' Bible, The version was made on the basis of Cranmer's, and was executed in a creditable manner ; and it contained, as all admit, some valuable improvements. Yet it made little head- way against the Geneva version, and did not even entirely displace Cranmer's. 8. The Rheiins - Douay Version. The English version of the Bible in use among Catholics was made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth by Catholic refugees living at Rheims, in France, in 1582. The New Testament was printed at Rheims, in 1582, and the Old Testament at Douay, in 1609. The work is some- times called the Rheims-Douay Version, and sometimes simply the Douay Version. The Rheims-Douay Version is made directly from the Vulgate. The translators give abundant evidence of scholarsliip, and many of their renderings challenge admiration. Their diction is at times just sufficiently archaic to give a venerable air to their work ; and they retain some fine old English words and phrases which have now unfor- tunately gone out of general use. On the other hand they are ex- tremely literal, translating word for word, and maintaining even the Latin order of the words, and they retain with scrupulous care, and on principle, all the old " ecclesiastical words." They also give nu- merous expository notes, following in this respect the example of all the previous versions, and especially that executed at Geneva. About the middle of the last century. Bishop Challoner made a careful revision of the Rheims-Douay Version, amounting almost to a new version. Challoner's work consisted mainly in abandoning that extreme literalness which marked the version originally, and in mod- ernizing, to some extent, its archaic diction, and bringing its expres- sions more within the scope of current modern English. The first edition of it is dated 1750. 9. King James's Version. The English version of the Bible in common use among Protestants, and generally known as the Authorized Version, was ma.de in 1611, in the reign of James I. The King's plan was to appoint fifty-four translators, divided into 58 ENGLISH LITERATURE. six companies, of which two companies were to be settled at Oxford, two at Cambridge, and two at Westminster, and to each company a certain portion of the Scriptures was assigned for translation. Only forty-seven translators were actually appointed. The translators were designated in 1604. The work of actual translation, however, did not begin until 1607. Three years of continuous labor were then spent by the several companies in completing the particular part assigned to each. Three-fourths of a year were afterwards spent in revising the whole by a joint committee of revision, consisting of two delegates from each company. This committee having gone over the whole and settled the text, it was put into the hands of two, Bishop Bilson on behalf of the Bishops, and Dr. Miles Smith on behalf of the Trans- lators, to attend to the printing. The work was completed in 1611. The men engaged in this work were taken mostly from the Uni- versities, and were among the most conspicuous scholars of their day. A code of rules was drawn up for their guidance, the most im- portant of which was that no notes or comments were to be added. Two other regulations were that the Bishops' Bible was to be made the basis, and that the old ecclesiastical words were to be kept. These rules were less rigorously observed, the translators taking a middle course. Only a few of the ecclesiastical words were retained, and the version as a whole comes nearer to that of Tyndale than to any other. The new version soon displaced all other Protestant versions, even the Geneva gradually giving way to it; and from that time to the present it has been the translation in common use among all English Protestants. No version of the Scriptures in any language ever en- joyed a greater popularity. Its literary character especially has received the highest commendation. There is, in the language, no work of equal value as a specimen of English. Catholic and Prot- estant alike have recognized its value in this respect. II. THE ENGLISH PRAYER-BOOK. Another of the great treasures of English literature is the Book of Common Prayer according to the Use of the Church of England. As a specimen of English it is unequalled by anything that the language contains, except the English Version of the I>ible. When we con- sider the influence which the continual and reverent use of such a book, for more than ten generations, must have had upon tlie lan- guage, the opinions, the feelings, and the conduct of a great people, it is impossible not to concede that it holds a foremost rank among the treasures of the language. T^E ENGLISH PRAYER-BOOK. 59 The greater part of the substance of this book existed previously in Latin, and is traceable to a remote antiquity. Some portions of the service had been translated into English for the use of the people one hundred and fifty years at least before the preparation of the Prayer-Book in its present form. This earlier book of service, exist- ing with variations in different dioceses, and under different reigns, but having a substantial uniformity, was called the Prymer. The word appears to have been originally derived from some small man- uals, which were spread among the people, of the first and chief lessons of religious belief and practice. This old English Prymer contains the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Litany, and many other equally familiar portions of the present ser- vice. It formed, evidently, the basis for a large part of the present Prayer-Book. On the accession of Edward VI. the subject of preparing a Book of Common Prayer was proposed, and a Commission was appointed, consisting of Archbishop Cranmer, six Bishops, and six clergy of the Lower House of Convocation. This commission proceeded with due deliberation, and having completed their labors, presented the Book of Common Prayer to the King, to be by him laid before Parliament. The book, after some discussion, was accepted by Parliament, and an Act of Uniformity was passed, making its use obligatory. This book, first issued in 1549, is called the First Prayer-Book of Edward VI. In the following year another Commission was appointed by the King, consisting of Cranmer and a number of divines, to give a revi- sion of the first book. The book, as revised by them, was reported to Parliament, adopted, and issued, in 1552, and is known as the Second Prayer-Book of Edward VI. On the accession of Elizabeth, the Prayer-Book was subject to a further and final revision, and was adqpted in its present form in 1559. There was, hoAvever, an additional collection of Prayers and Thanks- givings upon Several Occasions, appended to the Morning and Even- ing Prayer, in 1662. Tlie English Book of Common Prayer was formed in the main out of materials previously existing, partly in English, partly in Latin, in the service-books of the various dioceses, many of them traceable to a remote antiquity. It was not the work of any one man, or set of men, though traces of particular workmen may be found here and there, but was the slow and steady outgrowth of time, as it is a noble expression of a great. God-fearing race. 60 ENGLISH LITERATUEE. III. THE SHORTER CATECHISM. Another document worthy of mention among the literary treasures of the language is the Shorter Catechism prepared by the Assembly of Divines who met at Westminster in 1643. This famous Assembly was nearly six years in session, having been convened July 1, 1643, and having adjourned finally February 22, 1649. It contained many of the choicest spirits of the Presbyterian element in both England and Scotland. All the documents which they put forth, the Confession of Faith, the Directory for Public Worship, the Form of Church Government and Discipline, and the Catechisms, are remarkable as mere literary productions. But none of them are to be compared in this respect with that known as the Shorter Catechism. As a mere specimen of exact verbal expression, there probably has been nothing superior to the Shorter Catechism since the days of Aristotle. To the entire body of English-speaking Presbyterians all over the world, and to the great majority of Congregationalists also, this won- derful summary of Christian doctrine has formed a part of the house- hold treasures of the race. By long-established custom it has from early years been lodged in the memory of nearly every Presbyterian child ; it is associated, in the minds of Presbyterians, with deeds of heroic daring and patience, which make it dear to the heart. There can be little fear of mistake, therefore, in placing this Shorter Cate- chism of the Westminster Assembly among the literary treasures of the language. The influence of this Catechism upon the opinions, the conduct, the language, the modes of thought and expression, of those who have received it, is beyond that of any other uninspired book which the literature of the race contains. As a system of doctrine, this Catechism has of course its opponents. But as a model of expression, and as a specimen of standard English, in which character alone it has a place in the present volume, it has defied criticism. IV, ENOLISH HYMNODY. The religious Reformation of the sixteenth century has given a wonderful development to a particular form of lyric poetry. Psalms and Hymns, in the two races, English and German,, chiefly affected by that movement. Psalms and Hymns arc not new in religious worship. They have been used by the Christian Church in all ages. But the particular form of the Psalms and Hymns now in use originated with the Reformation. ENGLISH HYMNODY. 61 A leading idea with the Reformers, both in England and on the continent, was to simplify religious worship, and to give to the laity a more active participation in it. Instead, therefore, of the elaborate and multiplied forms "of the old established ritual, the Protestant churches adopted a service of a much simpler character, and this always included, of course, the church music. This change, first made by Luther, was followed up by Calvin, and from him found its way into England through the English exiles living at Geneva. Sternhold and Hopkins. The first Psalm-Book, or metrical version of the whole Psalter, in a form suited for public worship, that was used in the English Church, was that known as Sternhold and Hopkins. It was so called from the two men chiefly engaged in its production. It was completed in 1562. Not one of the parties concerned in this version seems to have had the slightest particle of taste, or feeling of genuine poetry. The lan- guage is occasionally elevated and pure, because the stanza is nothing more than the common prose version, with the words so arranged as to make lines and to rhyme. In the main the authors fully justify the language of Campbell, who says, that "with the best intentions and the worst taste, they degraded the spirit of Hebrew Psalmody by flat and homely phraseology ; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity-, turned into bathos what they found sublime." Tate and Brady. A Kew Version of the Psalter appeared in 1696, one hundred and thirty-four years after the first appearance of Sternhold and Hopkins. The authors of the "New Version" were Nahum Tate (1652-1715), poet-laureate, and Nicholas Brady, D. D. (1659-1726), chaplain to William III., both Irishmen by birth. Tate and Brady gained but slowly upon its ancient rival. Not many years ago either was bound up with the various editions of the English Prayer-Book, according to the taste or the interest of the publishers. Rouse's Psalms. The Scotch Version of the Psalms was made in 1645, by Francis Pouse, an English statesman. Eouse was a member of Parliament, and also of the Westminster As^sembly, and was Provost of Eton under the Commonwealth. Rouse's Version, after some revision, was " allowed and appointed to be sung" in 1649, and is still exclusively used by the stricter ofishoots of the Scotch Kirk. 6 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Watts's Psalms and Hymns. The first English Hymn-Book used in public worship was that of Dr. Isaac Watts, 1674-1748. There were other hymn writers before his time, but his collection, which came into use about 1715, was the first regular Hymn-Book. No such body of sacred verse as Watts's had been seen or imagined before by Englishmen, and its eflTect was immense. For a long time his Psalms and Hymns entire were used, exclusively, or nearly so, by the great bulk of Dissenters in Britain and of Calvinists in America. Wesleyan Hymns. Within the same generation with Dr. Watts another school of hym- nody was founded by a yet more fertile writer, Charles Wesley (1708- 1788). Of his separate hymns there must be fully six thousand. His life was one of great activity, but his thoughts naturally ran into rhyme and metre. He composed on horseback, and under all con- ceivable circumstances. John Wesley possessed a poetic talent hardly inferior to that of his brother Charles, but it was less exercised. Some of their books appeared under their joint names. The choicest of the Wesleyan hymns appeared in John Wesley's great Collection, 1779, for which its editor claimed, with entire truth, that " no such hymn-book as this had yet been published in the Eng- lish language." Successors to Watts and Wesley. Dr. Watts had many imitators or followers, of whom the most con- spicuous and useful were Philip Doddridge, D. D. (1702-1751), and Mrs. Anne Steele (1716-1778). Some hymnists wrote under the influ- ence both of Watts and of Wesley. The most eminent of these are Toplady (1740-1778) ; the Olney hymnists, Cowper and Newton; and Joseph Hart (1702-1768). CHAPTER VII. Milton and his Contemporaries. (1625-1673.) The next great name in English literature, in chronological order, after Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare, is that of Milton. The period to which Milton more especially belongs is that of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, 1649-1660. He is connected, however, in many ways, with the preceding reign, that of Charles I., 1625-1649, and to some extent with the succeeding reign, that of Charles II., 1660-1685. The great historical events of this period are the rise of the House of Commons to power, ending in a rupture between the Parliament and the King; the execution of the King; the brief rule of the Com- monwealth and of Cromwell ; and the Restoration of the Stuarts. The writers of this period are divided into three Sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Milton ; 2. Political and Miscellaneous writers, beginning with Clarendon; 3. Theological writers, beginning with Jeremy Taylor. I. THE POETS. Milton. John Milton, 1608-1674, if not the greatest of English poets, is second to Shakespeare only. Milton's chief poem, Paradise Lost, is unique in literary history, and is admitted by all to be one of the noblest achievements of human genius. Milton's personal character also has a certain stateliness and grandeur, hardly inferior to that of his chief poem, and is of itself enough to mark him as one of the 63 64 ENGLISH LITERATURE. great men of all time. There is no grander figure in English history than that of John Milton. Birth and Education. — Milton was a native of London, the son of a scrivener. His early education was begun by a private tutor, and was marked from the first by a zealous devotion to classical studies. The same trait followed him at Cambridge, where he acquired dis- tinction as a Latin poet. He entered the University at the age of fifteen, and remained there seven years, taking his degree of Bachelor in 1G28, and that of Master of Arts in 1632. Subsequent Studies. — After leaving the University, Milton retired to the house of his father, then living in the country, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, and remained there five years, during which time he continued with unabated zeal to read the Greek and Latin writers. During this period of studious retirement, also, he wrote the poems Arcades, Comus, Lycidas, L' Allegro, and II Penseroso. European Travel. — In 1638, being then at the age of thirty, attended by a servant, Milton spent fifteen months in travel on the continent, visiting Paris, Genoa, Leghorn, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Naples, and other cities of Italy, " the most accomplished Englishman that ever visited her classic shores." Impression that he Made. — The elegance of Milton's manner and of his person (he was remarkable for his beauty), and his extraordi- nary accomplishments and learning, made him everywhere the object of attention among men of letters. " I contracted," says he " an inti- macy with many persons of rank and learning, and was a constant attendant at their literary parties, — a practice which prevails there and tends so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the preservation of friendship." Among the men of note whose acquaintance he made were Grotius, Galileo, Carlo Dati, Francini, and Manso. Being thor- oughly at home in the Italian language, he composed while in Italy several poems and complimentary Sonnets in Italian, which gained him great applause. Cause of his Return. — The news which Milton received from home of the unsettled state of affairs led him to return to England sooner than he had intended. " When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in England made me alter my purpose ; for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home." Occupation in London. — On Milton's return, he settled in London : "I looked about to see if I could get any place that could hold myself and my books, and so I took a house of sufficient size in the city ; and MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 65 there, with no small delight, I resumed my intermitted studies, — chiefly leaving the event of public affairs, first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that tavsk." While thus liv- ing, he undertook the instruction of liis two nephews, John and Edward Phillips, and of a few other lads, sons of his intimate friends. First Works as a Political Writer. — The affairs of the nation appear to have been uppermost in Milton's thoughts, and he began soon after that a series of remarkable treatises on matters of church and state, by which he became known throughout Europe as the foremost cham- pion of the Commonwealth. He wrote, in 1641, Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, The Reason of Church Gov- ernment against Prelaty, and some other works of a like character, and in 1642, An Apology for Smectymnuus. Marriage and Divorce. — In 1643, Milton was married to Mary Powell, the daughter of a loyalist Justice of the Peace, in Oxfordshire. Something of romance seems to have entered into this affair ; and the lady, after living with liim for a month, and not finding the Puritan atmosphere congenial, went on a visit to her father's house, and refused to return. Milton, thereupon, believing that the Scriptures gave to the husband, under such circumstances, the right of divorce, proceeded formally to repudiate his wife. Treatises on Divorce. — After thus repudiating his wife, Milton pub- lished in rapid succession his famous treatises on this subject: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce ; Tetrachordon, or Exposition of the Four Chief Places in Scripture which treat of the Nullities of Marriage ; The Judgment of the Famous Martin Bucer touching Di- vorce; Colasterion. End of the Matter. — The matter ended in the wife's becoming re- pentant, and in Milton's taking her back ; they seem to have lived happily together afterwards. Two Admired Treatises. — About the same time, 1644, Milton pub- lished bis two prose works which have been most admired, A Tractate on Education, and Areopagitica, or A Plea for the Liberty of Un- licensed Printing. Appointment as Latin Secretary. — In 1648, Milton was appointed Latin Secretary to the Council of State, and he afterwards held the same office under Cromwell. This office was equivalent to that of Secretary for Foreign Affairs, matters of diplomacy being then con- ducted chiefly in Latin. Work as Secretary. — The business of the Secretary, however, at least as conceived by Milton himself, was not only to write the dis- patches to foreign governments, but to compose from time to time such 6* E 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE. treatises on affairs of state as might be needed to vindicate the pro- ceedings of his Government before the public tribunal of the world. An abler, more conscientious, or more independent advocate, probably, was never raised up for any great political party. His various " Trac- tates " are as celebrated in their way as was the military or the politi- cal career of Cromwell, and are almost as much a part of the history of the times. Political Writings. — The titles of some of Milton's political Trac- tates are the following : The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, Prov- ing that it is Lawful to Call to Account a Tyrant or Wicked King ; Eikonoklastes, literally "The Image Breaker," written to weaken the force of the book put forth by the royalist party, called Eikon Basilike, " The Royal Image; " and A Defence of the People of England against Salmasius. The work last named was the crowning efibrt of Milton's genius in political writing. Salmasius was the picked champion of the royalist party on the continent. He was a man of great learning and eloquence, and had written A Defense of Charles I. It was the appeal of the royalists against the republicans, and was trumpeted throughout Europe as unanswerable. Milton's reply was so crushing in its force that Salmasius is said to have died of chagrin at the mor- tifying defeat. After the Eestoration. — On the downfall of the Commonwealth and tlie Restoration of the Stuarts, Milton found it necessary to keep him- self out of the public view until the passage of the Act of Oblivion, in 1660. During the latter years of his life, in consequence of the celeb- rity of his writings, he was an object of great interest and reverence to foreigners visiting England^ and his house was often thronged with distinguished visitors. . Milton was three times married, but had surviving children only by his first wife, — three daughters. His Blindness. — In 1653, while in the midst of his political labors, and partly in consequence of them, Milton became totally blind. He had from youth suffered from weakness of the eyes, and the excessive use of them in this season of intense excitement hastened the final dis- aster. Several of his political Tractates, and his three longest Poems, were composed while he was thus shut out from all sight of the exter- nal world. The Paradise Lost, commenced many years before, was published in 1667; Paradise Regained and Samson Agouistes were published in 1671. The Paradise Lost, after its completion, had to wait two years before it could find a publisher, and even then its way to fame was very slow. The whole amount received by him and his family from MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 67 the copyright of it was only £28. The odium attached to him for his championship of a defeated political party was doubtless one cause of so tardy a recognition. " Waller, not Milton, was long considered the Virgil of^he nation." — London Quarterly. Waller himself, in the heyday of his pride, wrote these words: "The old blind schoolmaster, John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the Fall of Mlin : if its length be not considered a merit, it hath no other." Waller. Edmund Waller, 1605-1687, was regarded in his day as one of the great lights of English literature. It is now by sufferance only that he holds in literature any place at all. Waller's poems are nearly all short occasional pieces, chiefly of an amatory nature. In connection with Godolphin, Waller also trans- lated the fourth book of the jEneid. He was one of the most popular ppets of the age of the Restoration, and was long regarded as the most elegant and refined master of style. But he has gradually fallen into almost total disrepute and neglect. Cowley. Abraham Cowley, 1618-1667, was likewise accounted in his day as one of the greatest of English poets. This verdict also has long since been reversed. Cowley was, undoubtedly, a man of abilities, and an accomplished scholar ; but his poems lack truth and naturalness. He tried to make poetry out of what he had read in books, instead of making it out of his own experience of life. Cowley's poetical works are divided into four parts : Miscellanies ; Mistress, or Love Verses ; Pindaric Odes ; and The Davideis, a heroic poem, celebrating the troubles of David. Wither. George Wither, 1588-1667, was a poet of some note in his own day, who, after having passed almost into oblivion, has in recent times risen again into favor. His restoration to notice is due chiefly to the praises of Southey, Lamb, and others in the present century. Wither was an exceedingly voluminous writer. The list of his separate publications numbers nearly one hundred. Among the best are Wither's Motto (Nee habeo, nee careo, nee euro), and The Hymns and Songs of the Church. ( 68 ENGLISH LITERATUEE. Herriek. Kobert Herriek, 1591-1662, was a lyric poet of considerable note, in the times of the Commonwealth and the Restoration. He was edu- cated at Cambridge, and took holy orders, but was sadly imclerical, both in his manner of life and in his writings. He was a frequenter of taverns, where he " quaffed the mighty bowl " with Ben Jonson and other boon companions. His verse is mostly of the light, anacreontic kind, and some of it is loose and licentious. Herriek published Noble Numbers, or Pious Pieces, containing only hymns and other religious lyrics ; also, Hesperides, containing both devotional pieces and anacreontics, or " works human and divine," as he himself styled them, and the two kinds are oddly mixed up. With all his irregularities, however, he was a genuine poet, and he often wrote with singular sweetness and beauty. Suckling. Sir John Suckling, 1608-1642, was pre-eminently the cavalier-poet of the times of Charles I. Suckling's poetical works are of three kinds, — his dramas, which are of little value, his longer pieces, which are not much read, and his ballads and songs. These last have placed Suckling at the very head of English writers of song. They are not characterized by any very profound emotion, but are unsurpassed for sprightliness and ease. Butler. Samuel Butler, 1612-1680, was a humorous writer of great celebrity. His chief work, Hudibras, a sort of English Don Quixote, is univer- sally received as one of the best works of wit and humor to be found in the language. The wit indeed often depends upon circumstances and allusions with which the public are no longer familiar, and there- fore the work is not so generally read as it once was. Still it is, and it will ever be, a great favorite. The object of the poem was to ridi- cule the Puritans. Other Poets. Some of the other poets of this period are the following : Thomas Carew, 1589-1639, a gay courtier of the time of Charles I., and the author of numerous short amatory pieces and songs of the con- ventional kind then in fashion ; Sib William Davenant, 1605-1668, a dramatist, who succeeded Ben Jonson as Poet Laureate, and at his death was buried in Westminster Abbey, with the inscription, " O MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 69 Eare Sir William Davenant! " ; John Taylor, 1580-1654, self-styled " The Water-Poet," and the author of over one hundred and thirty- poems and pieces, descriptive, satirical, and humorous ; Francis Rouse, 1579-1658, celebrated for his metrical version of the Psalms, which is still used with loving reverence by a large and respectable body of Presbyterians, both in Great Britain and America ; Francis QuARiiES, 1592-1644, a quaint writer, the author of numerous works, mostly poetical, and now known chiefly by his book of Emblems; and William Habington, 1605-1645, an accomplished English Catholic, who published a volume of Poems, mider the title of Castara, and A History of Edward IV. II. political and miscellaneous. Clarendon. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 1608-1673, was an eminent writer and statesman of the times of Charles I. and Charles II. Clarendon favored the Stuart cause, but with moderation. After Charles I. was beheaded. Clarendon remained abroad with Charles II., and came in with the Restoration, He was at the head of the ministry under Charles II., and his daughter, Ann Hyde, was married to the King's brother, the Duke of York. Two of Clarendon's descendants through her — Mary and Anne — became Queens of England. On the acces- sion of the Whigs to power, he was deprived of office and driven into exile, and he ended his days abroad, though after his death his remains were allowed to be deposited in Westminster Abbey. Clarendon's writings are numerous, and are of the highest value. They are important, not only as authentic records of grave historical transactions, by one who was a chief actor in them, but as noble speci- mens of English literature. His chief work is his History of the Rebellion, that is, of the civil war connected with the expulsion and restoration of the Stuarts. It is a large work, printed usually in 6 or 7 vols. 8vo. Prynne. William Prynne, 1600-1669, an English Puritan, was first brought into notice by his book, Histrio-Mastix, A Scourge for the Players, and by the barbarous punishment to which he was subjected on account of it, Prynne's book was a general tirade against stage-plays, as being "sinful, heathenish, lewd, ungodly spectacles," and against the " profession of play-poets and stage-players " and the " frequenting of 70 ENGLISH LITERATURE. stage-plays," as being " unlawful, infamous, and misbeseeming Chris- tians," " besides sundry other particulars concerning dancing, dicing, health-drinking, &c." This furious blast was no ofi-hand performance, but a laborious work, in quarto, on which the author employed several years of toil. His Punishment. — To silence so audacious a scribbler, the Govern- ment expelled him from the University, degraded him from the bar, fined him £5,000, set him twice on the pillory, burned his book before his eyes by the common hangman, sentenced him to imprisonment for life, cut off both his ears, and burned upon both his cheeks the letters S. L., " Schismatic Libeller," but according to his own version, Sdg- mata Laudis, '* Marks of Praise." Such were some of the sweet per- suasives of argument in the " good old times ! " Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, achieved permanent distinction as a writer by a philosophical work called the Leviathan, in which he treats of the fundamental principles of political science. Career. — Hobbes was educated at Oxford ; travelled on the conti- nent several times, as tutor of the Prince of Wales (Charles II.), and of other young noblemen ; in 1654 returned permanently to England, and died at the country-seat of the Duke of Devonshire, in whose family he had served as tutor to three successive generations. Hobbes published a number of works, but his fame rests almost ex- clusively on his Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth. This treatise, which reduces all theory of govern- ment to blind submission to the ruling power, has been the subject of more attention and more denunciation than any other political work in the language. At the time of its appearance it was denounced by writers of all classes. His system of ethics was declared to be pure selfishness, reducing the conscience and emotions to a mere judgment of Avhat succeeds or fails. Of late years, however, there has been a tendency to reopen the judgment passed upon Hobbes and to consider his positions more carefully. Sir Thomas Browne. Sir Thomas Browne, M. D., 1605-1682, was a profound thinker and a writer of robust English, though he had a fancy for using words of Latin origin, and especially for giving Latin titles to his works. His most celebrated production is Religio Medici, The Religion of a Physician. It was translated into the Latin, Italian, German, Dutch, MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 71 and French. As a sequel to this work, the author wrote Christian Morals, which is also in high repute. Another work is The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunxial Lozenge, in which the author displays his learning and his ingenuity in finding everywhere traces of tliis form : " quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, quin- cunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in everything." — Coleridge. " A reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decus- sation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx." — Johnson. Bishop Wilkins. John Wilkins, D. D., 1G14-1672, Bishop of Chester, though eminent as a dignitary of the English Church, is chiefly and most favorably known as a philosophical writer. He was very zealous in the work of founding the Eoyal Society, and published many works of a philo- Bophical character. The following are his chief works : Essay towards a Real Charac- ter and a Pliilosophical Language, in which he anticipates the mod- ern plionographers ; Mercury, or The Swift and Secret Messenger, showing how a Man may witli Privacy and Speed Communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any Distance, which looks almost as if he had been on the verge of stumbling upon the Telegraph ; Discovery of a New World, a discourse tending to prove that it is probable there may be anotlicr habitable world in the moon, with a discourse con- cerning the possibility of a passage thither; Discourse concerning a New Planet, proving that it is probable that our earth is one of the planets. Izaak Walton. Izaak Walton, 1593-1683, a quaint writer of this period, is held in great repute, especially for his Complete Angler. He appears to have, been of humble birth, and followed the business of a linen-draper. Having acquired a competency, he retired from business, and lived thenceforth in leisure, devoting himself to angling and reading. Congeniality of sports, aided by his sweetness of temper, brought him in contact with many of the famous men of his times. The Complete Angler, though an unpretending volume, took at once, and has ever since held, a place among English classics. The book has so much of the author and his quaint, genial spirit, that it may almost be called an autobiography. Besides tiie Angler, Walton \ 72 ENGLISH LITERATUEE. wrote Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson. These biographies vie in excellence with the Angler. They have ever been regarded as models of pure, easy composition. Walton's life must be regarded, in its tranquillity and simplicity, as a striking phenomenon, a perfect idyl, amidst the turmoil and passion of the Rebellion and the Restoration . III. THEOLOGICAL NA/'RITERS. Jeremy Taylor. Jeremy Taylor, D. D., 1613-1667, is, by general consent, one of the greatest glories of the English pulpit. He may be considered as the Spenser of theological literature. He has the same boundless afflu- ence of imagination as Spenser, the same tendency to rambling dis- cursiveness in style, pardonable for the many exquisite nooks and corners of thought to which it so often leads, the same veneration for kingly and ecclesiastical pomp and state. His best known works are Holy Living, Holy Dying, Liberty of Prophesying, The Great Exemplar, or a Life of Christ, and a collec- tion of prayers, called The Golden Grove. His pen, however, was always busy, and his writings are enough to fill several large folios. They have been published, with a life by Heber, in 15 vols., 8vo. Bishop Hall. Joseph Hall, D.D., 1574-1656, an eminent scholar and divine, was educated at Cambridge, and rose through various ecclesiastical pre- ferments to be Bishop of Norwich. His principal works are the following: Satires, written in his youth; Contemplations upon the Principal Passages in the New Testament ; and Episcopacy by Di- vine Right. Usher. James Usher, 1580-1656, is one of the most distinguished names in the annals of the English Church. Usher's works are numerous, and were regarded by his contemporaries as marvels of research. It may be said of the majority of them, however, that the growth of knowledge has thrown them decidedly into the shade. His Annals of the Old Testament, and his Sacred Chronology, were for a long time the standards of ecclesiastical chronology, and are even still followed in the marginal dates inserted in the Authorized Version of the English Bible. MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 73 Fuller. Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, the ecclesiastical historian of Great Brit- ain, is about as much known for his wit as for his learning. His voluminous works on church history, instead of being the dull, heavy reading that such works usually are, abound in a quaint, epigrammatic wit that makes them in a high degree entertaining and lively. His principal works are the following: The Church History of Great Britain, fol. ; History of the Worthies of England, fol. ; The Holy and the Profane State, fol. The Church History is perhaps too gossipy for the dignity of the subject, but it is at least not dull. The Worthies is a collection of biographies, often from original sources, and is a storehouse of valua- ble knowledge. The Holy and Profane State is likewise mainly biographical, — the first part, or Holy State, giving historical exam- ples for imitation, and the second part, or Profane State, giving ex- amples to be avoided. All his writings give evidence of varied learning, and all have the peculiar, epigrammatic turn already no- ticed. He has been censured by some for want of sound judgment as a historian. The criticism has some foundation. At the same time, it is hard to read a page of his writmga and not to give him credit for entire honesty and good faith. Bishop Pearson. John Pearson, D. D., 1612-1686, a learned Bishop of the Church of England, acquired lasting fame by his Exposition of the Creed, which has become a classic in theological literature. It is studied as a text- book in most theological schools of the Episcopal Church. Pearson on the Creed and Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity usually stand on the same shelf. Cudworth. Kalph Cudworth, 1617-1688, a learned theologian of the English Church, is chiefly known by his great work, the Intellectual System of the Universe. This work was directed against the atheistical sys- tems of Hobbes and others. Cudworth was remarkable for his candor as a disputant ; indeed, he set forth the positions and arguments of his opponents with so much clearness and force, that many zealots censured him for betray- ing the truth, and intimated that the arguments against religion which he first brought forward on behalf of its enemies were stronger than 7 74 ENGLISH LITERATURE. those which he afterwards adduced of his own to upset them. Truth would be the gainer if she had more such right-minded champions. Barro^A^. Isaac Barrow, D. D., 1630-1677, was very highly distinguished both as a mathematician and a theologian. He was Professor of Mathe- matics in Cambridge, then Master of Trinity, and finally Vice-Chan- cellor of the University. His mathematical works are in Latin. His theological works, which are in English, first Appeared in 3 vols, folio. They consist of Treatises on the Pope's Supremacy and on the Unity of the Church, and Sermons. His Sermons rank very high. No Sermons in the English language have received a more general verdict for almost every kind of excellence of which such compositions are susceptible. Ho-we. John Howe, 1630-1705, was, in the opinion of Eobert Hall, "the greatest of the Puritan divines." Critics who do not accofd to Howe so distinguished a place, are yet unanimous in considering him one of the greatest of theological writers. His writings are not so numerous as those of Baxter and others, and they are wanting in grace and ele- gance ; but they are regarded as surpassing those of all other Puritan divines in force, and in breadth of view. B-obert Hall says : " I have learned far more from John Howe than from any other author I have ever read. There is an astonishing magnificence in his conceptions." His best known works are: The Living Temple; The Redeemer's Tears ; and The Redeemer's Dominion over the Invisible World. Baxter. Richard Baxter, D.D., 1615-1691, one of the leading Non-conform- ist divines, is said to "have preached more sermons, engaged in more controversies, and written more books, than any other Non-conformist of the age," which is saying a good deal, as they were all voluminous writers. A selection of his works has been printed in 23 vols. 8vo. Of this immense mass, the greater part has gone into oblivion. It was not, indeed, like the writings of some voluminous authors, pon- derous and curious inatter, meant only for tlie learned few, but it re- lated to the living issues of the times, and was addressed to readers at large. But those issues tliemselvcs mostly have passed away, and with them the literature of the occasion has ceased to exist except as a part of liistory. Two of Baxter's works, however, are a signal excep- MILTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 75 tion to this remark. These are the Call to the Unconverted, and the Saints' Everlasting Kest. These two treatises, abridged to suit modern wants, have passed through countless editions, and have continued to form a part of the religious literature of the English speaking race all over the world, and doubtless will do so to the end of time. Baxter was one of the busiest men of his time, and one of the most influential. But he is at this day, probably, exerting a wider influence by these two books than he did while living by all his multiplied labors. Owen. John Owen, D.D., 1616-1683, is generally considered the greatest of the Puritan divines. He was a man of great learning, and his industry was prodigious. His works fill 24 vols, large octavo. The two of most enduring character are the Commentary on the Hebrews, and the work on The Holy Spirit. Owen did not cultivate the graces of style, but there is always robustness in his argument. He discussed whatever subject he under- took as if he intended to leave nothing to be said by those who should come after him. With all the progress made since his time in the science of criticism and exegesis, no prudent commenator, even now, would undertake to expound tlie Epistle to the Hebrews without a constant reference to the work of Owen. In his writings of a practical character, he had a peculiarity, beyond all the other great writers of his school, of making his pious emotion dependent in all cases upon some solid scriptural basis. Bunyan. John Bunyan, 1628-1688, is, of all the writers of his age, the great- est marvel. With only the most limited opportunities of education, he produced a work which is one of the greatest classics, not merely of English literature, but of all literature, ancient and modern. The Iliad itself is not more clearly a work for all time and all men than is the Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan, the Bedfordshire tinker. Bunyan was an illiterate tinker, and in early life shockingly pro- fane. Being brought under strong religious conviction, he abandoned his former way of life, and became ever afterwards a most earnest and devoted Christian. The change in his religious character reacted, as in such cases it often does, upon his intellectual development ; and though he never attained to, nor indeed aimed at, the character of a learned man, he yet became a most powerful thinker and writer, his topics being limited chiefly to those drawn from the Bible and from 76 ENGLISH LITERATURE. religious experience, and he is second to none in the power of descrip- tion, or in the purity of his English. In one particular and most difficult department of writing, Allegory, he stands unrivalled, not only in English, but in all literature. Shakespeare is not so clearly the first of Dramatists, as is John Bunyan the Prince of Dreamers. His Dream of the Pilgrim's Progress is con- fessedly the greatest of Allegories, ancient or modem ; it has been translated into almost every language that has a religious literature of its own, and it probably has been more read, and been instrumental of more spiritual good, than any other book, the Bible only excepted. Bunyan has been called the Spenser of the unlearned, the Shake- speare of the religious world. He did not write for literary glory, but solely for the religious instruction of the rude people among whom he lived ; yet the highest literary authorities have bowed in reverence before the wonders of his art. CHAPTER VIII. DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. (1675-1700.) The period included in this Chapter embraces the reigns of Charles II. and James II., 1660-1688, the final expulsion of the Stuarts, the Eevolution of 1688, and the reign of William and Mary, 1688-1702. It was, especially in its earlier part, a period of great licentiousness of manners, which is but too faithfully reflected in much of its poetical and all of its dramatic literature. The authors of this period are, for convenience of description, divided into four Sections: 1. Poets, beginning with Dryden; 2. Philosophical and Miscellaneous writers, beginning with Locke; 3. Theological writers, beginning with Tillotson ; 4. The Early Friends, beginning with George Fox. I. THE POETS. Dryden. John Dryden, 1631-1700, fills a larger space in English litera- ture than any other writer between the age of Milton and that of Pope and Addison. Dryden is confessedly one of the greatest of English poets ; and although there may be a question among critics as to his precise rank, his name is never omitted in any enumeration of our first-class authors. His Early History. — Dryden was born of an ancient family of the name of Driden. The change in the spelling of his name was a fancy 7* 77 78 ENG1.ISH LITERATURE. of his own. His parents were rigid Puritans. He was educated first at Westminster, under the famous Dr. Bushy, and afterwards at Cam- hridge. He was early in life a great admirer of Cromwell, and his first poem of any note was Heroic Stanzas on the Late Lord Pro- tector, written on the occasion of Cromwell's death. They contain some passages in his happiest vein. Dryden, however, always wor- shipped the rising sun, and on the overthrow of the Commonwealth and the restoration of the Stuarts, he went over to the winning party and wrote his Astrsea Kedux, a poem of welcome to the new order of things. Dryden's Plays are twenty-nine in number, and run through thirty- two years of his life, — from his thirty-first to his sixty-third year. All of his earlier plays are modelled after the French drama, which King Charles had made fashionable. They are in rhyming verso, are occupied solely by heroic and exalted personages, and filled with scenes of inflated and incongruous splendor. When this fashion was at its height, it received a rude shock from a lively parody, The Rehearsal, written by the Duke of Buckingham. Dryden's plays after this were more natural, and were written in blank verse, which he formerly had scouted as beneath the dignity of the drama. But in all his plays, rhyming or unrhyming, heroic or comic, he is fully open to the charge of immorality. Dryden wrote a poem, Eeligio Laici, the object of which was to defend the Church of England against dissenters. Towards the close of his life he embraced the Catholic religion, and wrote the Hind and Panther in defence of his new opinions. In this poem, the Hind is the Church of Rome; the spotted Panther is the Church of England; the Independents are bears, and the Calvinists are wolves, etc. His latest productions were poetical versions of portions of Juvenal and Pcrsius, and of the J^neid of Virgil. He wrote also, about the same time, his Fables, being imitations from Boccaccio and Chaucer. Very late in life, also, he wrote his Ode to St. Cecilia, the loftiest and most imaginative of all his compositions. His complete works were edited by Sir Walter Scott, in 18 vols., 8vo. Roscommon. Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1633-1684, a native of Ireland, was a nobleman of cultivated tastes and great purity of char- acter; and he holds a respectable place among English poets. He wrote Odes, Prologues, etc. ; translated Dies IrjE, and Horace's Art of Poetry ; and wrote an Essay on Translated Verse. He seems to DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 79 have been about the only writer of his time who was tlioroughly pure and moral. Dorset. Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, 1 037-1706, a nobleman of gay life and easy manners, wrote a few songs which were very popular, and some satires which "sparkled with wit as splendid as that of Butler." — Macaulay. Dramatic Writers. Several dramatic writers contemporary with Dryden are worthy of note. Among these may be named the following : Thomas Otway, 1651-1685, Avho began as an actor in London, but, not meeting with much success, betook himself to writing plays, partly original, partly translations or imitations from the French. ]\lany of his plays were successful at the time, but only two have maintained their reputation among readers and actors of the present day, viz. : The Orphan, and Venice Preserved. Otway was improvident by nature, and died young in very indigent circumstances. Thomas Siiadwell, 1640-1092, who was crowned poet laureate, and who had some slight poetic ability and some wit, but is now known chiefly by the ridicule heaped on him by Dryden. Nathaniel Lee, 1658-1691, Avho gained notoriety as much by the irregularities of his life as by his genius, was the author of eleven dramas, all tragedies but one. Owing to his habits of intem- perance he became insane, was for a time in Bedlam, and was finally killed in a street-brawl. II. PHILOSOPHICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. Locke. John Locke, 1632-1704, is one of the names always quoted in speak- ing of the great thinkers who have largely influenced the current of English opinion on science, morals, or religion. By the circumstances of his life he was thrown into connection with the statesmen to whom the public affairs of the nation were subjects of controlling practical interest. His thoughts consequently were much occupied with questions of this kind, and though not a professed po- litical writer, in the sense of being a partisan, he yet wrote several treatises on political subjects. Among these may be named particu- larly his Letters on Toleration, giving views in regard to political lib- erty much in advance of his times. He wrote also Thoughts concern- 80 ENGLISH LITERATURE. ing Education, a treatise which, though containing some things now ascertained to be impracticable, has yet many vahiable suggestions, and is an important part of the literature of that subject. The great work of his life, however, was An Essay concerning the Human Understanding. He was occupied with this, at intervals, for eighteen years. It gave him rank as a philosopher and metaphysician of world-wide celebrity, causing his name to be associated with those of Bacon and Newton as leaders of human thought. The theory which Locke undertook to explode was the old doctrine of innate ideas, and the theory Avhich he proposed in its place was that all hu- man knowledge begins with sensation. This theory, which for a time obtained almost universal ascendency, has been materially modified since his day, and he himself is no longer acknowledged as a leader in any school of philosophy. But he did a great service by his unan- swerable refutation of many errors which up to that time held undis- puted sway, and by the example which he gave of a more rational way of treating metaphysical subjects. Locke's Essay, on account of the freshness and vigor of its style, held its place as a text-book in institutions of learning much longer than it otherwise would have done. While he makes no pretence to ornament, and never runs into smooth phrase or rounded periods, he avoids most sedulously the uncouth and abstruse jargon of the older writers on metaphysics, and aims everywhere to make his meaning plain and obvious to the common understanding. His diction is that of the common people, his illustrations are drawn from common life. His book, even in the abstrusest parts of it, is entertaining. Boyle. Hon. Robert Boyle, 1627-1691, son of the " Great Earl of Cork," is greatly distinguished as an experimental philosopher, of the school of Bacon, and as the chief founder of the Royal Society. Boyle was a very devout man, and though strongly tempted to enter into political life, he steadily declined, and gave himself entirely to the cultivation of science and the practice of religious duties, and at his death he bequeathed a fund for the endowment of an animal course of lectures in defence of the Christian religion. These lectures began in 1692, one hundred and eighty years ago. Many of them have been printed. They form a valuable series of works on the evidences of Christianity. Mr. Boyle himself wrote several works of the same sort, and studied the Hebrew and Greek languages for the sake of qualifying himself better to write on this subject. After his death, his works were col- lected and published in 5 vols., fol. DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 81 Temple. Sir William Temple, 1628-1699, a well-known English diplomatist, attained distinction as a writer. Temple's works fall into two classes. Memoirs and Miscellanies. The former consist chiefly of letters and autobiographical essays. The latter comprise his detached essays on various topics. One of them, the Essay on Ancient Learning, has at- tained considerable notoriety from the circumstance that its author was totally unfamiliar with the subject, and betrayed his ignorance. Tem- ple's chief merit .consists in his style, which has received the almost universal praise of critics. Evelyn. John Evelyn, F. E. S., 1620-1705, is chiefly known by his Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees. He was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society ; his work on forest trees was written at their re- quest, and was the first work published by them. It was written in view of the rapid destruction and disappearance of the forest trees in England, and of the importance of maintaining a proper amount of timber on the island, in order to the naval supremacy of the nation. The work was a seaspnable one, and it seems to have had the desired effect. III. THEOLOGICAL ^;VRITERS. Tillotson. John Tillotson, D. D., 1630-1694, was greatly distinguished as a pulpit orator. His Sermons were considered the highest models of pulpit eloquence ; and though not now held in so great estimation as they once were, they still have an honored place in English literature. Tillotson was born of Puritan stock, but early left the Presbyterians and conformed to the Church of England. He was educated at Cam- bridge, and rose through a long series of promotions until be oecame Archbishop of Canterbury. He is universally esteemed as one of the great lights of the English Church. His special distinctions were his moderation and good sense as an ecclesiast, and his eloquence as a preacher. His reputation in the latter point was prodigious during his life, and for one or two generations after his decease. His col- lected works, chiefly Sermons, have been frequently printed, formerly in 3 vols., folio, latterly in 12 vols., 8vo. F 82 EiTGLISH LITEEATURE. South. Eobert South, D. D., 1633-1716, is generally regarded as the most eloquent preacher of his day. He was a zealous Koyalist and Epis- copalian, and waged unsparing war upon the Puritans with his tongue and with his pen. South's chief distinction was as a preacher. His sermons are masterpieces of vigorous sense and sound English, though not altogether as decorous as modern taste requires in pulpit dis- courses. His works, chiefly sermons, have been published in 5 vols., 8vo. Stillingfleet. Edward Stillingfleet, 1635-1699, was a learned Bishop of the Church of England. He was the author of numerous treatises on theological subjects, and after his death his Works were published in 6 vols., fol. The most elaborate and important were the following : Origines Sacra?, or A Eational Account of the Grounds of Natural and Kevealed Eeli- gion; Origines Britaunicse, or The Antiquities of the British Churches. Beveridge. William Beveridge, D. D., 1637-1708, a Bishop of the English Church, was the author of several theological treatises in Latin, and of numerous works in English, the latter being chiefly on the practical duties of religion. The most esteemed of his devotional treatises is his Private Thoughts upon Religion. His English works have been printed in 9 vols,, 8vo. Bishop Ken. Thomas Ken, D. D., 1637-1710, a learned and amiable Bishop of the Church of England, is especially noted for his devotional works. The familiar long-metre doxology, " Praise God from whom all bless- ings flow," is the composition of this good prelate, being the conclud- ing verse of his three hymns for Morning, Evening, and Midnight. It is, of itself, suflBcient to give him a lasting place in the memory of all God's people. Matthew Henry. Matthew Henry, 1662-1714, one of the leading Kon-conformist divines of the seventeenth century, is chiefly known as a commenta- tor on the Scriptures. Henry's Commentary has passed through al- most innumerable editions, both in England and America. The London Religious Tract Society, 1831-1835, published a Commentary DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 83 made up of selections from Henry and Scott, which had a prodigious sale. As a work replete with devout thoughts, often expressed with a peculiar verbal antithesis which adds to their piquancy and force, Henry's Commentary is unrivalled. But the lack of that philological and linguistic, knowledge which must be the basis of all true biblical comment, and the rise since his time of a different and better style of exegesis, have caused his work, with all its merits, to be gradually superseded. IV. THE EARLY FRIENDS. George Fox. George Fox, 1624-1690, the founder of the Society of Friends, was chiefly distinguished by his apostolic zeal and labors as a preacher. He has also claims to consideration as a writer, both for the amount and character of his writings, and for the relation which they bear to a large and influential society of Christians. The following are his principal works: Journal of his Life and Travels; Collection of Christian Epistles, Letters, and Testimonies ; Gospel Truth Demon- strated in a Collection of Doctrinal Books, etc. Fox's Journal par- ticularly is worthy of commendation. Barclay. Eobert Barclay, 1648-1690, was an early member and the most re- nowned apologist of the Society of Friends. Barclay was of noble family, and received a thorough education. He attended the Scots College in Paris, of which his uncle was principal, and while there became thoroughly adept in the French and Latin tongues, speaking and writing them witli facility. Subsequently he gained a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Having more education than most of the early leaders of the Society, it fell to his lot to be their champion by the pen. As in those days George Fox was their chief preacher, so Barclay was their chief writer. The greatest of all his works was An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, as the same is held forth and preached by the People called in Scorn, Quakers. Barclay's Apology is an acknowledged classic in the theological literature of the Society. It has been translated into most of the languages of Europe. William Penn. William Penn, 1644-1718, the founder of Pennsylvania, was, next to Barclay, the ablest advocate and exponent of the doctrines of the 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Friends. His distinguished social position, and his eminent public services, if they did not add to the force of his arguments, gained for them respectful attention, and helped to give protection and security to the rising sect. Penn's writings were numerous and exerted a powerful influence. They were published in a collected form in 1728, in 2 vols., folio. Those of most note are No Cross, No Crown ; Quakerism a New Name for Old Christianity ; The Great Law of Liberty of Conscience Debated and Defended. Colonization Scheme. — One item in the property which Penn inher- ited from his father was a claim against the Government of £16,000 for services rendered. Believing that he could best realize his views in regard to religious and civil liberty in a new country, he sold his claim to the Government for the territory which afterwards became the Province of Pennsylvania, with the right to colonize the same. Penn came to his new colony in 1682, and remained until 1684, regu- lating its afiairs. Returning to England, he took an active part in the political aflfairs of England, and was a great favorite with James II. CHAPTER IX. Pope and his Contemporaries. (1700-1740.) The eighteenth century opens with the reign of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuart sovereigns, 1702-1714, followed by the reign of George I., the first of the Brunswick dynasty, 1714-1727. The first third of the century is made illustrious by many great names in literature. For convenience of treatment, these are consid- ered under four heads, or sections : 1. The Poets, beginning with Pope ; 2. The Dramatists, beginning with Wycherley ; 3. The Prose writers, beginning with Addison; 4. Theological writers, beginning with Butler. I. THE POETS. Pope. Alexander Pope, 1688-1744, reigned supreme in the domain of letters during all the first part of the eighteenth century. His poetry has not the naturalness and simplicity of Chaucer's, the universality of Shakespeare's, the majestic and solemn earnestness of Milton's, or even the freedom and breadth of Dryden's, nor did it so appeal to the consciousness of the national heart as that of the school which sprang up near the close of the century. It was to a certain degree artificial. Yet its art, it must be confessed, was consummate, and within the scope to which it was limited, it reached a perfection which has never been surpassed. It was pre-eminently the poetry of the wits. But it could not touch, it never touched, the national heart, like the poetry of Cowper and of Burns. Pope's chief works, given in nearly the order of their composition, 8 85 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE. are : Pastorals, written by him at the age of sixteen ; Essay on Criti- cism ; Kape of the Lock ; Messiah ; Translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey (in which latter he was aided by Broome and Fenton) ; Essay on Man ; and The Dunciad. There was a time when Pope's poetry was considered. the model of thought and expression. Throughout the entire eighteenth century his lines were regarded by all, except his personal enemies, as stamped with profound genius. The modern school of criticism, however, has put a different estimate upon Pope's merit. It has denied him any equality with the great poets, with Chaucer, Shakespeare, and MiUon, and scarcely even allowed him the first place among the second-rate poets. Pope's works are marred by conventionalism and would-be neatness. Rarely if ever does the poet rise to any flight of passion. His uniform use of the rhyming heroic couplet becomes excessively monotonous ; every couplet and line is so nicely turned and so carefully balanced, that the reader longs for an occasional irregularity. Pope is undoubt- edly witty and sarcastic. The tendency to point and polish, which disqualified him for being a true epic poet, has made him the most successful epigrammatist in the language. No one has ever equalled him in the art of turning a couplet. The reader will search in vain in Pope for any of those broad strokes whereby a truly grand poet delineates a character or suggests a profound truth, any up-welling of emotion, any daring flight of im- agination, any sweet play of humor. Still, Pope will remain what he has ever been, an elegant writer of English. His correctness in the structure of phrases and the choice of words, his avoidance of every- thing bizarre, render him a safe model of study for those whose style is still crude. Pope's verse can scarcely be a stimulant, but it may prove a wholesome corrective. Pope's Translation of Homer is accurate enough; and yet it is not Homer, for the simple reason that Homer is pre-eminently the naive poet and Pope is the perfect type of the conventional poet. There is not the slightest touch of sympathy between them. The Essay on Man contains an immense number of excellent precepts couched in excellent couplets, any one of which by itself would be perfect, but which taken together form a sermon rather than a poem. The Rape of the Lock displays more fancy and conceit than imagination, Abe- lard and Eloise find the fire of their passion dampened materially by the I*opean measure. The Dunciad is probably Pope's best work. In it he had the opportunity of exhibiting to the full his peculiar powers of satire, and the success of his poison-tipped, winged couplets may be estimated by the commotion and wrath which they aroused. POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 87 Prior. Matthew Prior, 1664-1721, was a poet of considerable celebrity in the reign of Queen Anne. Prior's writings are not numerous. The best known longer works are : The Country Mouse and the City Mouse, written by Prior and Montagu together, being a satire upon Dry den's Hind and Panther ; his Carmen Seculare, a panegyric on William III.; Solomon, and Alma, written in prison. His short, fugitive pieces, however, are generally considered preferable. The more elab- orate poems are heavy, and spoiled by the conceits of the age. But the tales and apologues are light, graceful, sparkling, and in the tone of good society. Gay. John Gay, 1688-1732, was one of several poets whose names and fortunes are linked in history with those of Pope and Swift. His first publication, Kural Sports, did not meet with much success. His next, the Shepherd's Week, in Six Pastorals, intended to ridicule Ambrose Philips, contained so much genuine comic humor, and such pleasant pictures of country life, that it became popular on its own account, rather than for its ridicule of another. Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London, is in the mock-heroic style, giving an account of the dangers encountered in walking through the crowded streets of the metropolis. After several attempts at opera, with only doubtful success, he wrote the Beggar's Opera, in which the principal charac- ters are thieves and highwaymen. It had unbounded success, being played for sixty-three nights, and it still holds its place occasionally upon the stage. The Beggar's Opera is decidedly objectionable, on account of the looseness of its morals. It is simply employing the arts of music and song to make the life of a highwayman appear agree- able and attractive, and its representation has always been followed by an increase of crime. Gay has been called, indeed, the " Orpheus of Highwaymen." Before writing the Beggar's Opera, and while in straitened circum- stances, he wrote a volume of Fables. They are the most pleasing of all his works, and the only ones that have any enduring hold upon the public mind, except his ballad of Black-Eyed Susan. Philips. Ambrose Philips, 1675-1749, was a poet and dramatic writer of considerable note. He was the author of some pastorals, a tragedy 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE. called The Distressed Mother, a translation of Sappho's Hymn to Venus, and a series of " poems of short lines," or character-pictures of the leading personages of the day. Parnell. Thomas Parnell, 1679-1718, is another of the minor British poets of the early part of the eighteenth century. Some of his poems, such as The Hermit, and the Hymn to Contentment, maintain a permanent position among the choice pieces of English literature. Thomson. James Thomson, 1700-1748, is the best of the descriptive poets of this period. His Seasons, and his Castle of Indolence, have taken a permanent place in literature. He is one of those minor poets who are read by each, successive generation with about equal favor. His fame is as high now as it was during his lifetime, perhaps higher. His descriptions of English scenery, because of their faithfulness to nature, are much read by foreigners, especially by Germans. Robert Blair. Rev. Robert Blair, 1699-1747,, was a Scotch poet and clergyman, distantly related to Dr. Hugh Blair, and the author of a poem of some note, called The Grave. Blair's Grave was once much read, but later and better works have pretty much crowded it aside. It is now rarely found except on the upper shelves consecrated to forgotten worthies. II. THE DRAMATISTS. A school of dramatists prevailed in the period now under consid- eration, who were equally distinguished by their abilities and their licentiousness. The writers of this class belong partly to the previous century, as they began their career during the life of Dryden, and took their character from the general corruption of manners which prevailed after the restoration of the Stuart dynasty. The four most conspicuous of these writers were Congreve, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar, of whom Wycherley was the earliest, and Congreve was, by general consent, the greatest. With these writers is indissolubly connected the name of Jeremy Collier, the man who, almost single- handed, undertook to stem this general torrent of licentiousness, and who so effectually exposed the enormous immoralities of the stage as POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 89 to arouse the nation to a sense of shame, and to bring back dramatic, literature once more within the decencies and proprieties of life. Wyeherley. William Wyeherley, 1640-1715, was a prominent dramatist of the age of the Restoration, and the founder of the school of licentious and immoral plays which then prevailed. The best known of his dramas are Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing-Master, The Country Wife, and The Plain Dealer. He also published a volume of Miscellaneous Poems, which Macaulay disposes of by the trenchant phrase, " this bulky volume of obscene doggerel." " The only thing original about Wyeherley, the only thing which he could furnish from his own mind in inexhaustible abundance, was profligacy." — Macaulay. Congreve. William Congreve, 1666-1729, a native of Ireland, excelled all the men of his generation as a writer of the licentious and immoral plays then in fashion. At the bringing out of his first play, The Old Bachelor, which could not now be read aloud in any family circle, Congreve had the support of all the great theatrical celebrities, Mr, Betterton, Mr. Powel, Mrs. Bracegirdle, Mrs. Barry; his play was commended by Dryden, as being the best he had ever heard ; he received official re- cognition from the Government, in the bestowal by Lord Halifax of a lucrative office in the Customs ; the public were in ecstasies. Vanbrugh. Sir John Vanbrugh, 1666-1726, another of those corrupt dramatists, was about equally distinguished as a writer and an architect. His two best known plays are The Relapse, and The Provoked Wife. He pos- sessed all the merits and demerits of his age. His plays abound in wit and strokes of comic delineation, but are all disfigured by their tone of profligacy. Like Wyeherley and Congreve, Vanbrugh failed to rise superior to the manners of the reign of Queen Anne, although he is perhaps not so wholly abandoned to them as were many of his contemporaries. Farquhar. George Farquhar, 1678-1707, was another dramatic writer of note. He was an Irishman by birth, and entered Trinity College, Dublin, but abandoned study and turned player. After playing for some time, he 8* 90 ENGLISH LITERATURE. began writing for the stage, and with marked success. His plays are all in the comic vein, either Comedies or Farces, and like the other dramas of those days are licentious and immoral. Jeremy Collier. Jeremy Collier, 1650-1726, an English Nonjuring Bishop, and a man of great celebrity, had in a high degree what the English call pluck, and neither fear nor favor could make him swerve a hair from what he deemed to be right and true. Collier was not a dramatist, but he is considered in this connection, because his greatest celebrity grew out of the battle which he had with the play-writers. The work to which reference has been made vras A Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the Stage. At no time in the history of the world has there been a stage so corrupt and licentious as that of England after the downfall of the Puritans and the return of the Stuarts to power. Collier attacked the monstrous evil. His essay threw the whole lit- erary world into commotion. Some of the dramatists attempted a reply, but their defence was lame. The victory was overwhelming. After fighting and floundering for some years, these indecent writers were either silenced, or were obliged to reform the character of their plays ; and the English drama ever since has been of a more elevated stamp, in consequence of the terrible castigation which it then received. III. THE PROSE WRITERS. Addison. Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, one of the greatest ornaments of Eng- lish literature, excelled, as did some others to be mentioned in this section, both in prose and verse. His greatest distinction, however, was as a writer of prose. He is generally accepted as the prince of English Essayists, and his Essays in The Spectator are held to be the finest models in the language of that style of writing. Addison had every advantage of education which the University of Oxford and the best preparatory schools in England could furnish, and he very early gave evidence of that elegant scholarship and refined taste which marked all his productions. He entered tlie University at the age of fifteen, and greatly distinguished himself there by his dili- gence and scholarship. He began his career as an author at the age of twenty-two, and he continued to write and publish, both in prose and verse, to the time of his death. A poem addressed to King William on one of his campaigns, and POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 91 written at the age of twenty-three, secured to the young author an an- nual pension of £300. At the age of tAventy-eight he visited Italy, where he remained for two or three years. On the death of the King, and the discontinuance of the pension, Addison was obliged to look about him for some other means of subsistence. Not long after, how- ever, he was applied to by the leaders of the Government under the new sovereign to write a poem commemorative of the celebrated battle of Blenheim, The task was undertaken by Addison, and the poem, called The Campaign, gave great satisfaction, and led to a long series of political preferments. Addison's writings, both prose and poetical, are very numerous. The poems best known are The Campaign, already mentioned, and the tragedy of Cato. His principal prose writings are essays contributed to The Tatler and The Spectator. It is as an Essayist that his pecu- liar excellencies appear to the greatest advantage. His contributions to the papers just named, particularly those to The Spectator, of which paper he was the originator, are generally conceded to be the best specimens of essay writing to be found in the language, and they are held up by the most eminent critics as models of style. Among the smaller poems of Addison are four of the nature of hymns, which seem absolutely perfect, and which have found their way into the hymn-books of nearly every Christian Church. These are " The Lord my pasture shall prepare," " Wlien all thy mercies, O my God," " The spacious firmament on high," and " When rising from the bed of death." They were all published originally in The Spectator. Steele. Sir Richard Steele, 1671-1729, is the writer of iMs age who comes nearest to the peculiar qualities and the matchless excellence of Addison. Like Addison, too, Steele's chief distinction is as an Essayist. In the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, Steele's papers rank very little below those of his great compeer. If Addison is clearly the first, Steele is with equal clearness the second, of English Essayists. Steele was a native of Ireland. He was educated at the Charter- house School, and afterwards at Oxford, but did not obtain his degree. He enlisted in the Horse-Guards, and rose to the rank of captain. During this period of his life, and also subsequently, though in a less degree, he was idle, dissipated, and extravagant. Steele took an active part in politics, and entered Parliament as a champion of the Whig party. He was expelled from the House for his political pamphlet entitled The Crisis, in which he set forth 92 ENGLISH LITEKATURE. freely the great dangers to which the Protestant cause was exposed. On the accession of the House of Hanover, Steele came into favor, was returned to Parliament, and made a baronet. Steele projected successively the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian. In these several undertakings he was largely assisted by Addison, and in the Spectator the latter's share was, it is well known, the largest. As an author Steele's reputation rests chiefly upon his essays. His comedies were comparatively unsuccessful. But as an essayist his fame will be lasting. To the Tatler, the Spectator, and the Guardian he contributed respectively 188, 240, and 82 papers. He and Addison may be justly regarded as the founders of the easy and graceful essay style of English prose, equally removed from the weighty and involved periods of Milton and the puerile conceits of the Eestoration. Swift. Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745, was, of all the writers of the age in which he lived, the one possessing the greatest originality and power. His peculiarities, however, both as a writer and as a man, were no less marked, and mostly not of an agreeable character. Hence he has been, deservedly, less esteemed than most of his distinguished con- temporaries, by those who have been free to admit his transcendent abilities. This unique personage in English letters was born in Dublin, of English parents, several months after the death of his father. Young Swift was supported by relatives, and sent by them to school and afterwards to Trinity College, Dublin. Here he did not improve his time after the orthodox fashion, but was chiefly occupied in writing political and per|paal satires. After remaining seven years at college he removed to England, and entered the service of Sir William Temple as private secretary. " He remained in this position about ten years. A large part of Swift's writings were of a partisan character, on the politics of the day. For his services in this respect he was made Dean of St. Patrick's, in Dublin. He is usually designated as "Dean Swift." The most celebrated of his political writings was the Dra- pier's Letters, criticising the English Government in regard to Irish affairs. Another pamphlet which gained much notoriety was the Modest Proposal. This was an ironical satire on the English govern- ment of Ireland, in which the autlior gravely proposes to relieve the public distress by making the children of the poor serve as food for the rich. For the last two or three years of his life he was hopelessly insane. POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 93 The works by which he is best known are Gulliver's Travels and the Tale of a Tub. As a writer, Swift is without a parallel in English letters. No one since the days of Rabelais has equalled him in humor and satire. His style is a model of clear, forcible expression, displaying a consummate knowledge of the foibles and vices of mankind. He has no sympathy with the grander flights of the imagination ; he never rises above the earth. But in his sphere he is inimitable. Much of the coarseness that disfigures his writings is due to the spirit of the age — but not all. Swift would have been coarse in any age. In his manners Swift was taciturn and unmoved, even amidst the laughter that his own humor had produced, sparing no one with his satire, yet of a not unkindly disposition to those who knew him well, and as shrewd and original in his conversation as in his writings. Arbuthnot. John Arbuthnot, M.D., 1675-1734, was one of that brilliant circle of authors and wits, of which Pope and Swift were the central figures. The Scriblerus Club, formed in 1714, counted among its members Ar- buthnot, Swift, Pope, Gray, Congreve, Atterbury, and Harley. Their object, according to Pope, was "to ridicule all the false tastes in learn- ing, under the character of a man of capacity enough, that had dipped into every art and science, but injudiciously in each." The club did not continue long, but it gave birth to the following works ; The First Book of Martinus Scriblerus (by Arbuthnot) ; The Travels of Gulli- ver (by Swift) ; and The Art of Sinking (by Pope). Arbuthnot's most brilliant performance was a work of humor, entitled The His- tory of John Bull, and intended to ridicule the Duke of Marlborough. Arbuthnot was a general favorite among the brilliant authors with whom he was associated. They were filled with jealousies of each other, but they all speak in terms of admiration and kindness of him. Shaftesbury. Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671-1713, was a statesman and writer of illustrious descent, and of equally illustrious abilities. Shaftesbury's writings are numerous, and have been held in high estimation, notwithstanding their faults of style. His best known work is Characteristics of Men, Matters, Opinions, and Times, 3 vols., 8vo. He was educated under the special care of John Locke. As a statei-sman, he was much trusted by King William. Warburton 94 ENGLISH LITERATURE. scented infidelity in the Characteristics, but the sober judgment of subsequent and abler critics has not confirmed the suspicion. Shaftes- bury's chief fault of style is a want of simplicity. " His lordship can express nothing with simplicity. He seems to have considered it vul- gar, and beneath the dignity of a man of quality, to speak like other men." — Blair. Bolingbroke. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, 1678-1751, was a political writer and speaker, contemporary with Pope, Swift, and Addison. Bolingbroke, if not the ablest and most profound, was at least the most brilliant of the illustrious company of authors that flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. He owed no little of his celebrity, in his own time, to his fascinating manners, the charm of his conversation, and even his personal beauty. It is not to be denied, however, that he had talents of a very high order, though he used them for ends thoroughly selfish and often ignoble, and he has left behind no monument of genius worthy of the large space which he occupied in the public estimation while he lived. His youth was no- torious for its profligacy and libertinism, his meridian of public life was one of splendid intrigue rather than of statesmanship, and he bequeathed in dying a posthumous work of an irreligious character, which he had not the courage to avow when living. Bolingbroke's literary executor, David Mallet, brought out a sump- tuous edition of his lordship's works, in 1754, in 5 vols., 4to. The works which obtained the greatest notoriety were the Idea of a Pa- triot King, and the Study and Use of History. In reference to the works of a sceptical kind which Bolingbroke left to Mallet to be pub- lished posthumously. Dr. Johnson said : " Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward : a scoundrel, for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality ; a coward, because he had not the resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death." Bishop Atterbury. Francis Atterbury, 1662-1732, Bishop of Kochester, was the inti- mate friend and associate of Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, and the other eminent men of that day. Pie was a man of brilliant parts, bold and self-reliant in temper, always ready to lend a hand in a literary or a political contest, and better fitted for such work probably than for that to which he was ordained. His sermons, however, are exceed- ingly able, and in a literary view are among the best that we have. POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 95 He took an active part in the controversy between Bentley and Boyle about the authenticity of the Epistles of Phalaris, more than half of Boyle's portion being written by Atterbury. Bishop Berkeley, George Berkeley, D. D., 1684-1753, Bishop of Cloyne, was highly distinguished as a philanthropist and a philosophical writer. Berke- ley was a native of Ireland and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin ; and the associate of Pope, Swift, Addison, Steele, Atterbury, and Arbuthnot. Among his philanthropic schemes was one for the con- version of the American savages, and as preparatory to this, the found- ing of a University in the Bermudas. He obtained a Parliamentary grant of £20,000 for this purpose, and several large private subscrip- tions. A charter was granted, providing for the appointment of a President and nine Fellows. The Queen offered Berkeley a Bishopric, if he would remain at home, but he preferred the headship of his new College, and sailed for America. He remained in Newport, R. I., for two years, waiting for the arrival of the money promised by the Gov- ernment. Finding that it was not likely to come at all, he returned to England, leaving behind him in the new world pleasant memories of his sojourn. Berkeley's works of greatest note were those in which he published his leading philosophical idea, denying the existence of matter. This idea was first set forth in the New Theory of Vision, and then more fully in the Principles of Human Knowledge. The Bishop's essays made a profound impression, and modified perceptibly the current of metaphysical opinion, though his views did not meet general accept- ance. Another work of his, the Minute Philosopher, written during his residence at Newport, is a defence of religion against the varioiis forms of infidelity, and is highly spoken of. The Bishop published also several essays on the use of Tar Water, and had a renowned con- troversy on the subject. Berkeley is spoken of in terms of unwonted commendation, not only by the distinguished men of his own day, who seem to have been charmed by the benevolence and genial warmth of his private character, but by astute critics, such as Dugald Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh. No single writing of Berkeley's is so well known as the brief poem which he wrote under the enthusiasm excited by the prospect of his going to the new world to found his University. The last stanza seems to have been prophetic : 96 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Westward the course of empire takes its way ; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; Time's noblest offspring is the last. Bentley. Richard Bentley, D. D., 1661-1742, Master of Trinity College, and Regius Professor of Divinity, Cambridge, is probably the greatest classical critic that England has yet produced. He is often called the British Aristarchus. Bentley' s chief work was his Dissertation upon the Epistles of Pha- laris, in which he undertook to prove that those and certain other oft quoted ancient documents were modern forgeries. The discussion ex- cited a furious controversy, in which nearly all the great scholars and wits of the nation were enrolled against him, — Boyle, Atterbury, Con- yers Middleton, Pope, Swift, and the whole posse of scholars hailing from Oxford, to which rival University Boyle, his nominal antagonist, belonged. Bentley held his ground single-handed against them all, and in the course of the argument displayed such amazing resources of learning, and such critical acumen, as raised him to the highest pinnacle of fame as a classical scholar and a critic. Two other works of Bentley's which also gained him great applause, and for which his critical learning and abilities were well adapted, were his Editions of Horace and Terence. He began also a new critical edi- tion of Homer, but did not live to complete it. His design was to re- store to the text the old Greek Digamma, a letter which has been dropped in all modern editions of the poet. Bentley was the most skilful of all critics in the matter of conjectural emendation. He was bold even to audacity in this respect, and yet his most important emendations have stood the test of scrutiny, and have for the most part become a part of the received text of the autliors so amended. Boyle. Hon. Charles Boyle, 1676-1731, Earl of Orrery, and nephew of the celebrated philosopher, Robert Boyle, was himself a man of distin- guished abilities, and was held in high estimation by the dignitaries at Oxford, and by Swift, Atterbury, Pope, and others. Boyle published an edition of the Epistles of Phalaris, and in an evil hour was tempted into a controversy witli Bentley, in regard to their authenticity. At- terbury helped him in his defence, writing, it is supposed, the greater POPE AND HIS CONTEMPOKARIES. 97 part of it, and all of that set joined in the hue and cry against the merciless critic. But jibes and sarcasms were no protection against the "swashing blows" delivered by Bentley. Conyers Middleton. Conyers Middleton, 1683-1750, was a voluminous writer, belonging to what may be called the quarrelsome class. Most of his writings have passed into oblivion with the personal squabbles in which they originated. His only work of permanent value was his Life of Cicero, which was, until the appearance of Forsyth's Cicero, the standard work upon the subject. Middleton's Cicero is an able and well-written biography, although open to criticism. The style is easy and vigorous, but disfigured here and there by the use of slang phrases. The chief objection to the conception of the work is that it extols Cicero unduly. De Foe. Daniel De Foe, 1661-1731, was the author of the world-renowned Eobinson Crusoe. De Foe was the son of a butcher, James Foe, the prefix being as- sumed by Daniel. He was educated among the dissenters, and was expected to become a minister, but he did not carry out the plans of his friends. He was for a time a soldier ; he was a political negotia- tor ; he engaged in several kinds of trade. But his chief occupation was that of authorship. The amount that he wrote was enormous. The complete edition of his works, by Walter Scott, was in 20 vols., 12mo. A large part of his writings was on political subjects. He entered freely into the discussion of public affairs, and not always on the winning side. His works number more than two hundred ; all of them were on subjects of popular interest, and were at the time much read. He is now known, however, almost exclusively as a nov- elist, and most of all by his one novel, the Adventures of Eobinson Crusoe. Wollaston. William Wollaston, 1659-1724, a clergyman of leisure, educated at Cambridge, published in 1722 a work called The Eeligion of Nature, which was much read, and is often quoted in religious and philosoph- ical treatises of the eighteenth century. In it he maintains that Truth is the supreme good, and the source of all morality, laying down, as a foundation of his argument, that every action is a good one which ex- presses in act a true proposition. 9 G 98 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Hutchinson. John Hutchinson, 1674-1737, was the founder of the Hutchinsonian school of interpretation. The pivotal idea of his system was that the Hebrew Scriptures contain the elements of science and philosophy as well as of religion, and that science is to be interpreted by the Bible. Huteheson. Francis Huteheson, 1649-1747, was a metaphysical writer of con- siderable celebrity. He was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. His writings on metaphysical science, though not numerous, exerted a large influence by their originality and the clearness and beauty with which his thoughts were presented. He is even sometimes considered as the founder of the modern Scottish school of philosophy. The doctrine which he particularly advocated was the existence of an innate moral sense. Hartley. David Hartley, M. D., 1705-1757, was a writer of some note on metaphysical science. He is the author of several medical treatises, but is best known by his Theory of the HumWi Mind. This theory regards the brain, nerves, and spinal chord as the direct instruments of sensation, by means of vibrations communicated to and through them by external objects. ^A^histon. William Whiston, 1667-1752, notorious in his own day for his theo- logical heresies, and the persecution and controversy to which they gave rise, is now chiefly known for his translation of Josephus. Bailey. Nathan Bailey, 1742, was author of the English Dictionary which was in current use previous to that of Dr. Johnson. Bailey's Dictionary was published in folio and in various other forms, and was for a long time almost the only acknowledged standard of the language, Mr. Bailey was a good philologist for that day, and his work was a worthy contribution to the cause of letters. Ephraim Chambers. Ephraim Chambers, 1740, was the author of Chambers's Cyclo- paedia. Chambers began as an apprentice with Mr. Senex, a globe- POPE AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. 99 maker in London. Acquiring, while in this business, a strong taste for scientific pursuits, he withdrew from the work of globemaking, and gave himself up entirely to the preparation of his Cyclopaedia. It was published by subscription, in 2 vols., fol., and had a large sale, bringing the author both money and fame. The work was enlarged from time to time, and finally led to, or was merged in, Kees's Cyclopaedia, 45 vols., 4to. IV. THEOLOGICAL ^ATRITERS. Butler. Joseph Butler, D. D., 1692-1752, a learned Bishop of the English Church, wrote several important works, but the others are thrown into the shade by that one with which the world is familiar. The Analogy of Keligion, Natural and Eevealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature. Butlei^s Analogy has been accepted almost universally as a standard work on the subject of which it treats, and it is used as a text-book in a large proportion of the higher institutions of learning. The distinc- tion which it has gained is due, however, more to the soundness of the argument than to the lucid or attractive style in which the argument is presented. It has been alleged, indeed, that the difiiculty referred to is owing entirely to the abstruse character of the subjects discussed. But this is a mistake. His style is not to be commended or imitated. He is dry, obscure, and dull, where Locke, Berkeley, or Brown would have been vivacious and lucid. Leslie. Charles Leslie, 1650-1722, a native of Ireland, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, was ordained in the English Church, but being a strong Jacobite, and refusing to take the oath of allegiance to Wil- liam and Mary, he applied himself to the use of his pen only. His Short and Easy Method with the Deists has acquired great celebrity, and is always quoted in lists of works on the evidences of Christianity. Staekhouse. Thomas Staekhouse, 1680-1752, a theologian of the English Church, is well known for his Complete Body of Divinity, published originally in folio, and for his History of the Bible, published originally in 2 vols., folio. 100 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Doddridge. Philip Doddridge, 1702-1751, was a Dissenting minister of great repute among all branches of the Protestant Church. His collected works fill 19 vols., 8vo. The works best known are : The Family Expositor, which occupies 6 vols, in the collected edition here men- tioned, and The Eise and Progress of Eeligion in the Soul. The Family Expositor has been extremely popular, and it is still used to some extent. The author seems to have had an instinctive sagacity in knowing just what was needed in such a work, to fit it for family use. The Eise and Progress has long since become a classic in the list of books on religious experience. Doddridge wrote also some very excellent Hymns, which have found their way into the hymnals of most Protestant churches. Leland. John Leland, D. D., 1691-1766, a Presbyterian minister, settled in Dublin, is distinguished as a writer of apologetics. Some of his works in defence of Christianity are considered as among the best that have ever been written. The one of greatest note is A View of the Deisti- cal Writers, 3 vols., 8vo. Ridgley. Thomas Eidgley, D. D., 1667-1734, an Independent Calvinistic di- vine, is chiefly known by his work, A Body of Divinity, being the substance of a course of lectures on The Assembly's Larger Cate- chism. This work, published originally in 1733, is still in current use, and is a standard work on theology among Presbyterians, and indeed among all Calvinists. Neal. Daniel Neal, 1678-1743, a Dissenting minister, is known almost exclusively by his History of the Puritans, 4 vols., 8vo. This is the story of the Non-conformists, as seen and told by themselves ; and it is usually applauded or condemned, according as the judge is a dis- senter or a member of the Church of England, There is no question, however, of its being a work of ability and research. Boston. Eev. Thomas Boston, 1676-1732, was a Scotch preacher of great note, whose Fourfold State used to be one of the household treasures in almost every religious family. CHAPTER X. Dr. Johnson and his Contemporaries. (1740-1780.) After the death of Pope, 1744, the person who for the next forty years figured most largely in literature was Dr. Samuel Johnson. The time of Johnson's supremacy covers, in round numbers, the first twen- ty-five years of the reign of George III., 1760-1785. It includes among its political events the celebrated trial of Warren Hastings, and the still more important issue, the American Revolutionary War. The writers who belong to this period are divided into four sections : 1. Miscellaneous Prose Writers, beginning with Dr. Johnson ; 2. Nov- elists, beginning with Richardson; 3. Poets, beginning with Gold- smith ; 4. Theological Writers, beginning with Warburton. I. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WRITERS. Dr. Johnson. Samuel Johnson, LL. D., 1709-1784, was for nearly an entire gen- eration the acknowledged autocrat of English letters. He was the centre of attraction for such men as Goldsmith, Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Garrick, Reynolds, and Gibbon ; his presence and conversation were everywhere courted as though he had been the great Mogul of literary opinion. Dr. Johnson was born at Lichfield, the son of a bookseller. He was afflicted from boyhood with scrofula, which weakened his eye- sight and otherwise indisposed him to bodily exertion. Notwith- standing these obstacles, he was, on his admission to the University, 9 * 101 1G2 F.NGLISH LITERATURE. iincommoi^ly well versed in the preparatory studies. After remaining tii.'ce ycni-s at Oxfo^ti;, b(j 'left for want of means to continue his resi- dence, and did not take his degree. At the age of twenty-seven he was married to a widow nearly twice his age, with vulgar manners, a loud voice, and a florid complexion. They seem, however, to have lived hapi)ily together, and on her death, sixteen years afterwards, he mourned her loss to a degree that for some years unfitted him for lit- erary labor. She brought him a fortune of £800, and with this he attempted to set up an Academy. He obtained, however, only three pupils, one of them the celebrated Garrick. The Academy failing, Johnson determined to go to London and enter upon a life of author- ship. Garrick went with him to seek fame and fortune as an actor. The first few years of Johnson's life in London were miserable enough. He often suffered from actual hunger, and at times he and the poet Savage walked the streets together at night, because too poor to pay for lodgings. The first work of his which brought him into note was London, a Satire, in imitation of Juvenal. There were in this short piece a vigor of thought and a polish of expression, that marked the author as a man of no common order. Pope, then in his meridian, recognized at once the unknown author as a dangerous com- petitor, yet had the generosity to help to bring him into notice and favor. Johnson's fortunes after this gradually improved. He found employment for his pen in a variety of literary enterprises, so that he was no longer in actual want, and in 1762, at the age of fifty-three, he received from King George III. the grant of an. annual pension of £300. His last days were spent in comparative ease and comfort. He became the centre of a circle of men rarely equalled for brilliancy and genius; he was honored with titles from the Universities; his voice was everywhere listened to as that of the greatest literary mag- nate of the realm. His principal works are the following : London, a Satire, already mentioned ; The Vanity of Human Wishes, his only other poem of note ; Irene, a Tragedy, generally admitted to be a failure ; Easselas, or The Happy Valley, a story with little incident, but embellished with a sonorous and flowing eloquence; The Kambler, of which he wrote 204 out of the 208 numbers; The Idler, another series of essays of a like character ; The Lives of the Poets, filling many vol- umes ; A Journey to the Hebrides ; An Edition of Shakespeare, with Preface and Notes ; and lastly, a Dictionary of the English Language. Johnson's merits as a lexicographer are of a mingled character. He was not a linguist ; he knew nothing of the science of language, and next to nothing of the requirements of lexicography, as now JOHXSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 103 understood. Yet, in the preparation of his English Dictionary, he achieved a great and lasting work, the most important single contri- bution to English letters of the age in which he lived. The collection of examples which he made from his own reading and research, in illustration of the meaning of the words, and the surpassing clearness with which in most cases he expressed the meaning in his definitions, have won the admiration of all competent judges, and have made his work the basis of all subsequent efibrts in the same line. As an Essayist, Johnson lacks the grace and simplicity and exqui- site humor which were the peculiar charm of Addison ; yet he was a fearless advocate of morals and religion, when it was the fashion among men of wit to decry them both ; and he undoubtedly, by his courage in this matter, and by the masculine force of his understand- ing, gave a tone to the public mind on this subject, the effects of which have been felt ever since. His critical judgments are to be received with caution. He was a man of violent prejudices, an ultra Tory in politics, and, as such, opposed to republicanism in every shape. He was not only bitter against the Americans, but he did scant justice to Milton, as the poet of the Commonwealth. His judgments, indeed, in matters of poetry, are the least valuable of his opinions. He could appreciate didactic or satiric poetry, like his own, or like that of Dryden, but he would have been as incompetent to feel the finer beauties of Tennyson, as he was to feel those of Shakespeare. His edition of Shakespeare, indeed, except portions of the Preface, was an utter failure. His Lives of the Poets, however, contains some of the best things he has written, and the work, with all its acknowledged shortcomings, is a valuable part of the permanent literature of the language. In enumerating the works of Johnson, Boswell's Biography of him should always be included. That biography consists mainly of the sayings of Johnson, as recorded by Boswell from day to day, and these sayings are probably a better exponent of Johnson's mind than any of his own writings. When he put pen to paper, his mind was at once on stilts, and he gave utterance to his thoughts according to the false ideas of style which he had formed. But in his table-talk, he was idiomatic and simple, and his thoughts came with a directness that added to their native force. Burke. Edmund Burke, 1728-1797, was a man of commanding abilities, and one of the leading writers and statesmen of his age. He was a native of Dublin, and a graduate of Trinity College of that city. 104 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Burke's first publication of any note was The Vindication of Nat- ural Society, by a Late Noble Writer. It was written in imitation of Bolingbroke, and published anonymously. " It was the most perfect specimen the world has ever seen of the art of imitating the style and manner of another. He went beyond the mere choice of words, the structure of sentences, and the cast of imagery, into the deepest re- cesses of thought ; and so completely had he imbued himself with the spirit of Bolingbroke, that he brought out precisely what every one sees his lordship ought to have said on his own principles, and might be expected to say, if he had dared to express his sentiments." The effect was the more remarkable, because in the opinion of all the emi- nent critics of that day, both friends and foes, Bolingbroke's style was "not only the best of that day, but in itself wholly inimitable." Yet the critics were completely taken in. The essay was accepted almost universally as a posthumous work of Bolingbroke's. Johnson, Ches- terfield, and even Warburton pronounced it genuine. In the course of the same year (1756, set. 28), Burke published his celebrated work, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which has become an acknowledged English classic, as much so as any writing of Aristotle is classical in Greek. The publication of this work brought the author at once into public notice, and led to the acquaintance and friendship of Johnson, Eeynolds, and other celebrities. In 1766, Burke entered Parliament, and for the next twenty years his pen and his tongue were occupied mainly with affairs of state. The most beautiful and eloquent of all his productions was called out by the excesses and the frenzy of the French republicans, after the overthrow of the monarchy. His own party was in sympathy with the revolutionists in France. But Burke became alarmed at the lengths to which they were going, and in 1790 he gave utterance to his feelings in the work just referred to, Keflections on the Revolution in France. On no one of his works did he bestow such care. The effect of the publication was prodigious, not only in England, but throughout Europe ; and honors and emoluments were showered upon the author from every quarter. The greatest work of Burke's public life was his Impeachment of Warren Hastings. Unfortunately, his speech on this occasion was not written out by the author. The traditions of it that remain, how- ever, leave little doubt that it was one of the greatest efforts of parlia- mentary eloquence in ancient or modern times. Burke was offered a peerage. Having just lost his only surviving son, he declined the barren honor ; and in A Letter to a Noble Lord, JOHNSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 105 written soon after, he gives expression to his feeling of loneliness and bereavement in terms of singular beauty and pathos. Burke's Par- liamentary Speeches fill several volumes, and form an enduring mon- ument to his fame as a great philosophical statesman, while his essay on The Sublime and Bccxutiful, and his Keflections on the Revolution in France, challenge to themselves a foremost place among the great English classics. Chesterfield. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, 1694-1773, "the philosopher of flattery and dissimulation," occupied a conspicuous position in society ancrtn affairs of state, and was ambitious of equal distinction in the world of letters. Chesterfield's Speeches in Parlia- ment were often of a high order of eloquence. His claim to a per- manent place in literature, however, rests almost entirely upon his Letters to his Son. These are graceful and elegant compositions, but are noted for the worldly, selfish, and even at times immoral character of the advice given. Junius — Sir Philip Francis. Sir Philip Francis, 1740-1818, was an accomplished political writer, contemporary with Burke, Fox, and Pitt. Sir Philip took an active part in the famous trial of Warren Hastings, and was conspicuous as a statesman and a member of Parliament. The conjecture that he was the author of the Letters of Junius, was early broached, and after much discussion^was nearly abandoned, notwith- standing the advocacy of such men as Macaulay and Brougham, until the year 1871, when the authorship of the Letters was put almost beyond question by the examination of the handwriting of Junius and of Sir Philip Francis by a professional expert. The Letters of Junius appeared at intervals in the Public Adver- tiser, of London, during the years 1769-72. By the boldness of their invective and the masterly style in which they were written, they at- tracted universal attention, and they exerted a prodigious influence upon the public mind. That influence was intensified by the impene- trable secrecy in which the authorship was shrouded. The writer was evidently well acquainted with important state secrets ; he was one whose abilities were of the first order, and who could not well live in obscurity ; yet of all the men eminent in letters and position, then living, there was not one whom it seemed possible to associate with the authorship of these Letters. Conjectures pointed to one after 106 ENGLISH LITERATURE. another, but some fatal mark was found that seemed to exclude each in succession, until the hunt was almost given up in despair. The public mind had well-nigh settled down in the conclusion that the mystery was insoluble. At length, in 1871, a volume appeared, enti- tled The Handwriting of Junius Professionally Investigated, by Mr. Charles Chabot, an Expert, which seems to settle the question. Its object is to prove by a minute and exhaustive examination of the Junian manuscripts and of the letters of Sir Philip Francis, that both were written by the same hand. The proof is of the strongest kind, amounting almost to a demonstration, and will go far to put this vexed question at rest. As specimens of style, the Letters of Judfflis are, in their kind, absolutely perfect. Hume. David Hume, 1711-1776, is universally known as the author of the most popular History of England yet written, and as a writer of great power on subjects connected with political economy, morals, and reli- gion. In the works last named he is a thorough-going infidel, attack- ing Christianity on metaphysical grounds chiefly. This class of his writings has been of most baleful tendency. Hume was a Scotchman, a native of Edinburgh. He abandoned business and the study of the law for literature ; was Secretary of the French Embassy, 1763-4; and Under-Secretary of State, 1767-8. His life was uneventful, and, with the exception of the few years when he served in Government offices, was passed in studious retirement, chiefly in London. Hume's merits as a historian are of a mingled character. His his- tory has been, and will contirlue to be, until superseded by a better, the most readable general work on the English past. In one respect, at least, its merits are unquestionable — the pureness and grace of his style. Gibbon declares that he always closed one of Hume's volumes " with a mixed sensation of delight and despair." As an investigator into the facts and truths of history, on the other hand, Hume is undoubtedly weak and untrustworthy — not merely because he wrote his work from the point of view of one political party (the Tory), or that he is guilty of many inaccuracies ; but because, as is evident from the time spent in its composition, and from outside evidence as to Hume's mode of study and composition, the writer w^as superficial and careless. The influence oi" liis Philosophical Opinions has been baneful in the extreme. His i)osition, as before remarked, is tliat of a thorough-going infidel. His "Essay on Miracles," the most celebrated of all his JOHNSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 107 philosophical writings, is still, in one form or another, the battle- ground between believer and unbeliever. By reason of the vigor and grace of its style, it has always been the most formidable engine of at- tack upon Christianity. Hume was not merely a metaphysical thinker, however. His politico-economical essays are masterpieces of clear thinking applied to practical subjects. They have been highly praised by subsequent leaders in the science, and may be considered as the forerunner, and in methodical arrangement the superior, of Adam Smith's celebrated dissertation. --Gibbon. Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794, by his great work, the Decline and Fall of the Koman Empire, created for himself a permanent place in liter- ature. The Decline and Fall is universally acknowledged to be one of the greatest masterpieces of historical composition, — having the artistic finish of the classic models and the exhaustive learning and research of modem history. It is subject, however, to one great blot. The author's prejudices against Christianity warped his judgment whenever that subject was introduced. Gibbon wrote some other works besides the Decline and Fall, but the only one of them of any note was his Autobiography, written to amuse his leisure hours, after his great work was off his hands and he had become famous. It is considered one of the happiest efibrts in that line of composition. Robertson. William Kobertson, 1721-1793, is another of the great historians of this period, — Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson constituting an illus- trious trio, whose names always go together, although both their works and they themselves are quite unlike. Robertson's chief works were A History of Scotland, A History of America, and A History of Charles V. Karnes. ** Henry Home, Lord Karnes, 1696-1782, has acquired deserved celeb- rity by his essay on the Elements of Criticism, which has a permanent value, and is one of the standard works on that subject. "The Ele- ments of Criticism, considered as the first systematical attempt to in- vestigate the metaphysical principles of the fine arts, possesses, in spite of its numerous defects, both in point of taste and of philosophy, infinite merits, and will ever be regarded as a literary wonder by those who know how small a portion of his time it was possible for the 108 ENGLISH LITERATUEE. author to allot to the composition of it, amidst the imperious and multifarious duties of a most active and useful life." — Dugald Stewart. James Harris, 1709-1780, is known as the author of Hermes, an Ingenious work on Language and Grammar. Ty^^vhitt. Thomas Tyrwhitt, 1730-1786, a distinguished critic of the last cen- tury, has secured for himself a permanent place in English literature by his valuable labors in the elucidation of Chaucer. Tyrwhitt's edi- tion of the Canterbury Tales, 1775-78, was the first serious and cred- itable attempt to rescue any part of the text of Chaucer from the shockingly corrupt state in which it had appeared in the earlier edi- tions. Nothing is more disgraceiul to English scholarship than the long-continued neglect on this subject; the greatest poet in the lan- guage, before Shakespeare, remaining for four centuries almost unin- telligible for want of proper editing. Tyrwhitt, by his edition of the Canterbury Tales, did an immense service, by showing what a mine of wealth here lay hidden. The vein tlius opened has been followed up by other explorers. But we still lack a really good text of Eng- land's first great poet. Lord Lyttelton. Lord George Lyttelton, 1708-1773, is the author of an ingenious essay, of permanent value, on the Conversion of St. Paul, proving from it the divine origin of Christianity. Lyttelton was educated at Eton and Oxford, and entered Parliament with prospects of a brilliant career. After a brief experience of political life, however, he re- signed his office, that of Chancellor of the Exchequer, and retired to private life, employing his leisure in literary pursuits. His Observa- tions on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul is still regarded as a masterpiece in its way. This beautiful monograph is an ingeni- ous and unanswerable argument for the divine origin of Christianity. Dialogues of tlie Dead was another work on which Lyttelton ex- pended much labor. It shows learning and study, and a familiar acquaintance with the historical characters introduced, but is now gen- erally considered dull and prolix, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter. Elizabeth Carter, 1717-1806, known in her later days as Mrs. Carter, as was the castom in England with single ladies after reaching a ma- MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WRITERS 109 tronly age, was celebrated for her classical scholarship. She received from her father, who was a clergyman, a thorough training in the knowledge of Latin and Greek, and she made herself familiar with Italian, German, French, and Spanish. The work which gained her most eclat was a translation of Epictetus, which, in Warton's opinion, " exceeds the original." Lady Mary Montagu. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1690-1762, is connected about equally with tlie age of Pope and that of Dr. Johnson. She fills a consider- able space in the history of the times, by the distinguished part which she played in social and diplomatic circles, by her intelligent and philanthropic eiForts in the matter of inoculation for the small-pox, and by her Letters, which have become a valuable part of literary history. She was the daughter of the Duke of Kingston. Her hus- band being appointed ambassador to Turkey, Lady Mary accompanied him, and wrote to her friends at home a series of Letters, which were surreptitiously published in 1763, and permanently established the writer's fame. As specimens of epistolary style they are among the best in English literature. She was the means of introducing into England the Turkish practice of inoculation for small-pox, boldly subjecting her own children to the then dreaded operation. It was not until Jenner introduced the still better system of vaccination that her benefaction was superseded. Elizabeth Montagu. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 1720-1800, belongs almost equally to the age of Dr. Johnson and to that of Cowper. She was by marriage cousin of the celebrated Lady Mary Montagu. Mrs. Montagu's hus- band died, leaving her in the enjoyment of a large fortune. Her house became the centre of literature and fashion. Her soirees were thronged with all the literary notabilities of the day. Mrs. Montagu herself was noted for her conversational powers, but she produced little in the way of authorship. The Letters of Mrs. Montagu, in two parts, were published after her death. They are lively, "gossipy" effusions, and form a part of the literary history of the times. 10 '^ 110 ENGLISH LITERATURE. II. THE NOVELISTS. Richardson. Samuel Eichardson, 1689-1767, came before the public a little earlier than his great rival, Fielding, and is sometimes called the father of the English Novel. But this epithet belongs more properly to the latter writer. Richardson's three novels, however, Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison, are among the memorable works of the age, and ensure to their author a permanent place in English literature. Richardson was a printer by trade, and he succeeded in gaining for himself a competency long before he ever thought of turning his atten- tion to writing. As a boy he evinced a fondness for reading, and skill in the use of the pen, so that the young women of the village frequently employed him to write their love-letters. In this way Richardson laid the foundations for that knowledge of woman's heart and woman's ways, which afterwards stood him in such good stead. Indeed, he seems to have been, throughout life, a chatty, not to say gossipy, soul, and never so much at home as when the centre of a small circle of kind-hearted if not particularly strong-headed female admirers. In judging Richardson's merits we must take into account the age in which he lived and the circumstances under which he wrote. Before him there had been no novel ; nothing but romances in imitation of the French, where the loves of princes and princesses were narrated in very vaporous and stilted language. Richardson brought the scene from the moonshine down to the earth, and was the first to give a real episode from English life, with real English men and women for actors. Fielding. Henry Fielding, 1707-1754, may be considered as the true father of the English Novel. There were other writers of fiction before him, as there were other poets before Chaucer. But Fielding first showed by example the great resources and power of this species of literature, not only as a delineator of manners, but as a moral influence in society. Fielding did a good many other things, and wrote many other works, among them no less than twenty-five Comedies ; but his three great Novels, Joseph Andrews, Tom Jones, and Amelia, so far overtop all else that he did or wrote, that it scarcely deserves to be mentioned in the comparison. As an artist, in the delineation of human nature, it is conceded on all hands that Fielding has never been surpassed by any writer of English fiction. Yet there is a coarseness in his scenes, JOHNSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. Ill and often in his language, that makes a sad drawback to the pleasure of reading him, Smollett. Tobias George Smollett, 1721-1771, is permanently associated in' fame with Kichardson and Fielding. His three novels, Roderick Ean- dom, Peregrine Pickle, and Humphrey Clinker, if not equal to the three great novels of Fielding, are superior to the three of Eichardson, and occupy a prominent place in the literature of the age. Sterne. Laurence Sterne, 1713-1768, is celebrated as a humorist and senti- mentalist. His two chief works, Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey, are among the best known of all the works of this period. III. THE POETS. Goldsmith. Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774, is one of the most conspicuous orna- ments of the period now under consideration. He excelled about equally in poetry and prose. Of the vast mass of his prose writings, however, the greater part has ceased to be of interest. The only one, in fact, that is now generally read is the Vicar of Wakefield. But his poems, though inconsiderable in amount, have a perpetual cliarm. There are, indeed, few poems in the language that have a better pros- pect of a permanent place in its literature than the Deserted Village. Goldsmith was a native of Ireland, the son of a clergyman of the Established Church. In boyhood he had the small-pox, by which his face was permanently disfigured. At the age of seventeen, through the liberality of a kind-hearted uncle. Goldsmith entered Trinity College, Dublin. Here he gained few distinctions, his habits of study, like all his other habits, being wrecked by improvidence. Mortified by an indignity put upon him by his tutor, Goldsmith left College, but lingered in Dublin until reduced to the extremity of destitution. His last shilling and most of his clothing gone, hungry and half naked, he set out for Cork, and on the way was saved from actual starvation by a handful of gray peas given him at a wake by a kind-hearted peasant girl. By the kind interposition of his brother, Oliver was reinstated in College, and remained there two years longer, at the end of which time he managed to take his degree. By the persuasion of his uncle, Goldsmith began studying for the church, and at the end of two years 112 ENGLISH LITERATURE. presented himself to the Bishop for examination, "but appearing in a pair of scarlet breeches, he was rejected." The persevering benefactor, his uncle, then procured him a position as private tutor, but Oliver quarrelled with one of the family over a game of cards, and lost his position. He had, ho\^ever, at the time of his dismissal, thirty pounds in cash, which seemed to him a mint of money. But in the course of six weeks he squandered it all, and returned to his mother without a shilling in his pocket. Once more the patient uncle conceived that the young spendthrift might perhaps succeed at the law, and supplied him accordingly with fifty pounds, wherewith to make a beginning. The fifty pounds were spent at the gaming-table, and Goldsmith was again at the verge of ruin. The next experiment of Oliver's friends was to set him up as a Doctor of Medicine. They put together what few guineas they could spare, and sent him to Edinburgh. Here he did not entirely throw away his time, but attended some lectures during the eighteen months of his residence. He could, however, tell a good story and sing a capital Irish song, and he shone accordingly in social circles more than in the halls of science. A roving disposition impelled him to travel, and he is next found on the continent, sometimes at seats of learning, picking up scraps of knowledge at the lectures of great scholars, but more frequently trav- elling througl| the country on foot, and getting his meals and lodgings by making himself agreeable to the peasants with his musical abilities and his other skill in tlie arts of entertainment. Returning to England at the age of twenty-eight. Goldsmith made his way to London, only to meet starvation in the face. For the next two or three years his struggles for the means of bare subsistence were extreme. He did all kinds of book work for the publishers, — whatever would bring a few pounds or even shillings. By degrees, however, his merits became known, and he had ample occupation, at remunerating prices. But his habits of easy improvidence kept him always in want, or in arrears. He was among the acknowledged celebrities of the day, mingling freely and on equal terms with the authors and artists who revolved about Dr. Johnson. The following are Goldsmith's principal works: The Deserted Village, the most beautiful of all his poems ; The Traveller, a poem giving descriptions drawn from his wanderings on the Continent ; the exquisite ballad of The Hermit, or the story of Edwin and Angelina ; Tlfe Haunch of Venison, a playful piece of pleasantry, acknowledging, in graceful verse, a gift of venison ; Retaliation, a good-natured satire, in which he paid off a few of the endless jokes against himself by drawing in turn a caxicature of some of his friends ; two successful JOHNSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 113 Comedies, The Good-Natured Man, and She Stoops to Conquer ; Pop- ular Histories of Greece, Eome, and England ; and lastly, A History of Animated Nature, in 8 vols., 8vo. As an historian and a writer on natural history, he made no pre- tence to original research. He was a mere compiler. But he had a wonderful skill in the art of composition ; and taking the materials collected by others, he worked them into forms of grace and beauty. His histories became text-books, his Animated Nature had the attrac- tion of a work of fiction. Gray. Thomas Gray, 1716-1771, gained for himself the very highest re- nown as a lyrical poet by his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. ••Gray was distinguished for the accuracy of his classical scholarship, and for his varied learning, and he formed many magnificent projects of works that never saw the light. His chief excellence is as a lyric writer, and in this line he stands among the first. The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is one of the poems of all time, and is just as sure of immortality as anything written by Horace or by Pindar. One familiar and remarkable tribute to the merit of this poem is the great number of translations of it which have been made into the various languages of Europe, ancient and modern. It has been trans- lated into Hebrew, the words and phrases being taken, as far as possible, from the classical idioms of the Old Testament ; into Greek, 7 difierent versions ; into Latin, 12 versions ; into Italian, 12 versions ; into French, 15 versions ; into German, 6 versions ; into Portuguese. His Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is only second to the Elegy in popularity. His other lyrical pieces are the following: Ode on Spring; Hymn to Adversity; Ode to Vicissitude; The Progress of Poesy, a Pindaric Ode ; The Bard, a Pindaric Ode. The Pindaric Odes have less of the elements of popularity than any of his poems. Collins. William Collins, 1720-1756, is one of the greatest of English lyric poets. What he tas written is not much in amount, but that little is of the highest order of excellence. Some of his odes are thought to come as near absolute perfection as anything ever written. The Ode on the Passions will doubtless live as long as the language itself in which the poem is written. 10* H 114 ENGLISH LITERATURE, Shenstone. William Shenstone, 1714-1763, is favorably known by his poem, The Schoolmistress, written in the Spenserian measure. Akenside. Mark Akenside, M. D., 1721-1770, had considerable eminence in his day as a medical practitioner and a writer on medical science. But his chief distinction was won by a poem on The Pleasures of the Im- agination, first published in 1744. Allan Ramsay. Allan Kamsay, 1685-1758, was a Scotch poet of some note. His poem, The Gentle Shepherd, has been a general favorite. . Young. Edward Young, 1684-1765, author of "The Night Thoughts," holds no inconsiderable place in English literature. "Young's Night Thoughts " was once almost as common a book as Pilgrim's Progress, and as generally read. It is still one of the most popular works in the language, although open to obvious and just criticism. " It cer- tainly contains many splendid and happy conceptions, but their beauty is thickly marred by false wit and over-labored antithesis ; indeed, his whole ideas seem to have been in a state of antithesis while he com- posed the poem. One portion of his fancy appears devoted to aggra- vate the picture of his desolate feelings, and the other half to contra- dict that picture by eccentric images and epigrammatic ingenuities." Mrs. Steele. Anne Steele, 1716-1778, is one of the sweet singers of the church. She was the daughter of a Baptist clergyman, the Rev. William Steele, of Broughton, Hampshire. She was never married, but in her later years became Mrs. Steele, by one of the beautiful courtesies of the olden time. She was the author of Poems on Subjects chiefly devo- tional, in 3 vols. The collection includes 144 Hymns, 34 Psalms, and about 50 poems on moral subjects. Some of her Hymns are faultless as lyrics, and are familiar in almost every household of the Christian faith. Falconer. William Falconer, 1730-1769, has a permanent place in English literature by his one remarkable poem. The Shipwreck. JOHNSON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 115 Chatterton. Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770, was a youthful poet, whose extraor- dinary talents and impostures are among the standing wonders of literary history. Chatterton was born in Bristol, and was the son of a sexton. The family for some generations had been in charge of the Eadcliff church, and it was in the muniment-room of this church that the young poet found the means for his impostures. He had a morbid fancy for anything curious or antique, and the illuminated capitals in some of the old manuscripts to which he had access excited him. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a scrivener, and not having much else to do, he eagerly devoured everything on the subject of heraldry and antiquities that came in his way. On the opening of the xsew Bridge, the Bristol papers contained A * Description of the Fryer's First Passage over the Old Bridge, purport- ing to be taken from an ancient manilscript. The paper, which was a really curious affair, being traced to the boy Chatterton, he declared that it had been found by his father, with many other old MSS., in an iron chest in the muniment-room of the church. From this time, he continued to furnish to the public and to individuals specimens of these old MSS. The poetical compositions which he furnished purported to be chiefly by W. Canynge, a Bristol merchant, and Thomas Rowley, a monk or secular priest, both of the fifteefith century. The peculiarities of the ancient manuscripts, the spelling, grammar, and modes of thought were so thoroughly imitated, that the documents seemed cer- tainly genuine ; yet the poetry was of so superior a character to any- thing likely to be found in such circumstances, that the critics were sorely puzzled. A violent controversy arose on the question of the authenticity of these remarkable productions. Why should a lad, who could produce from his own brain poetry of so high an order, tax his ingenuity to palm off the credit of it upon others ? Nearly all the leading writers and critics of the day, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Gibbon, Bishop Percy, and a host of others, engaged in the discussion. Young Chatterton went to London, and readily made engagements with the booksellers, and was on the full tide of literary success when suddenly he was found dead in his bed, from the effects of a dose of arsenic. There was a streak of insanity in the family, and the disease which, in the judgment of charity, led him to this sad end, was prob- ably only another form of that which had prompted his strange im- postures. He died at the age of seventeen years nine months. 116 ENGLISH LITERATURE. IV. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. Bishop Warburton. William Warburton, 1698-1779, is one of the most conspicuous fig- ures of the times in which he lived, especially as a writer on polemic theology. His chief work, the Divine Legation of Moses, displayed prodigious learning and abilities. He is noted for his belligerent pro- pensities, and for the great variety, as well as the extent, of his attain- ments. The Divine Legation of Moses was an argument against the deistical philosophy of the day. Into this work, and the Vindication which he wrote in reply to attacks upon it, Warburton poured all the treasures of his learning. It was regarded at the time as one of the very master- pieces of English tlieology. The style is rough and often confused, but abounds in brilliant passages, and is a strong testimonial to the author's erudition. One of the most striking features of the work is Warburton's anticipation of modern discoveries in Egyptology. According to Lord Jefirey, Warburton was the last of the race of powerful English polemics, a giant in literature, but with many of the vices of the gigantic character. Bishop Lo^ATth. Kobert Lowth, D. D., 1710-1787, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, was a man of eminent standing in the Church of England. His chief work was Praelections on Hebrew Poetry. He wrote also an English Grammar, which was the foundation of Murray's. Hervey. James Hervey, 1713-1758, a divine of the English Church, edu- cated at Oxford, was a man of a very devotional spirit. His works have been published in 6 vols., 8vo. The most popular by far was the Meditations. "Hervey's Meditations, Pilgrim's Progress, the Whole Duty of Man, and the Bible, are commonly seen together on a shelf in the cottages of England." The sentiments are devout, and there is a good deal of poetical imagery, but the style is inflated and pompous. La>Ar. William Law, 1687-1761, a graduate and Fellow of Cambridge, gave up his Fellowship in 1761 and became a Non-conformist. JOHXSON AKD HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 117 Law's works have been printed in 9 vols., 8vo. Most of them are controversial, and are of no special interest except as a part of the his- tory of the times. Others, as the Serious Call to a Holy Life, and the Treatise on Christian Perfection, are still among our most popular works on practical religion. Thomas Ne^Arton. Thomas Newton, D.D., 1704-1782, a graduate of Cambridge, and a Bishop of the English Church, is well known to theological literature by his large work on the Prophecies. This was for a long time con- sidered a standard work on this subject, but has of late lost much of its authority as a true interpretation of the prophetical writings. Cruden. Alexander Cruden, 1701-1770, is known to literature by his one work, the Concordance to the Holy Scriptures. Lardner. Nathaniel Lardner, D. D., 1684-1768, wrote a work of immense learning on the Credibility of the Gospel History, published originally in 17 volumes. His work gives evidence of immense reading and in- dustry, as well as sound judgment, and is regarded as exhaustive of the biblical learning of the times. Bishop Challoner. Eichard Challoner, D. D., 1691-1781, a learned Bishop of the Catholic Church in England, wrote many works, partly controversial, and partly dogmatic and devotional, and is highly esteemed as a writer. Challoner published an English Bible, being in some sense a new version, and differing considerably in its diction from that of the Rheims-Douay. Dr. Chal loner's version has been followed more than any- other by English-speaking Catholics since his day, and his influ- ence upon the language of religion and devotion among Catholics has been accordingly very great. His influence in this respect has been still further increased by the great and continued popularity of his books on practical religion, such as '* The Catholic Christian Instruct- ed," " Meditations," and other devotional works, some of which have been circulated by millions. So familiar, indeed, is the language of Challoner to Catholic Christians generally, that whenever, in any dio- cese, the question arises as to which English version of the Vulgate 118 ENGLISH LITERATURE. shall be authorized for use in that diocese, the preference is given to Challoner's, rather than to the Rheims-Douay, notwithstanding the tra- ditional veneration in which the latter is held. This was the decision of the late Cardinal Wiseman, and has been that of most English- speaking Bishops of the Catholic Church for the last hundred years. Aiban Butler. Alban Butler, 1700-1773, an English Catholic, educated at Douay, and for a long time President at St. Omer's, spent a large part of thirty years in his compilation of the Lives of the Saints. This was a large work, in 12 vols., 8vo. It was translated into French, Spanish, and Italian, and it has passed through several editions. It is a storehouse of curious learning, both ecclesiastical and secular, and it is written in a style of great purity and beauty. The author appears to have been a man of refinement and culture, singularly inoffensive in manners and spirit, carrying out in his life that amenity of temper everywhere ob- servable in his writings. CHAPTER XL COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES- (1780-1800.) During the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, there was no English writer equal in originality and power to the poet Cowper. He is taken, therefore, as the representative man of the period. The great political event of the time was the outbreak of the French Kev- olution. Note. — At no point in the history of English literature is it so dif- ficult to mark a well-defined period as here. Many writers, whom it is necessary to include in the present chapter, had intimate relations with the writers and the events of the previous period. Many of the writers, on the other hand, survived far into the present century, and had relations with Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and their associates. Yet a careful consideration of their several cases will, it is believed, show that the main connection of these writers, after all, was with the writers and events of the last twenty years of the eighteenth century. It is still more evident that the popular literature of the period, par- ticularly in its poetical and theological aspects, assumed new and marked features, after Cowper and the Wesleys, and tike religious movement which they represented, had received full and distinct re- cognition. The writers of this period are divided into four sections : 1. The Poets, beginning with Cowper; 2. The Dramatists, beginning with Sheridan ; 3. Miscellaneous Prose Writers, beginning with Hannah More ; 4. Theological Writers, beginning with the Wesleys. 119 120 ENGLISH LITERATUEE. I. THE POETS. Cowper. William Cowper, 1731-1800, created a new era in English poetry — springing at a bound into a place in the popular heart far more firmly established, far more deeply set, than Pope had ever attained. Pope had been the poet of the wits ; Cowper became the poet of the race. The poems of his which first touched the popular heart were the Task, and the ballad of John Gilpin. The impression thus pro- duced was deepened by his Hymns, contributed to the Olney collection, and by his extended work, the Translation of Homer. Cowper, though in moderate circumstances at the time of his birth, was connected, both on his father's and his mother's side, with some of the noblest families in England. He was of a gentle, sensitive na- ture, and through life he instinctively shrank from whatever required any sort of rude encounter with his fellows. At the age of six, his mother being dead, he was sent for two years to a boarding-school, where he suffered intolerable hardships from the tyranny of one of the older boys. He then went to Westminster School, where he served an apprenticeship of seven years to the classics. At the age of eighteen, he was articled as a clerk in a law office. In due time he was called to the bar, and he took chambers, but he gained no clients. His father was now dead, he was in his thirty-second year, and his patrimony was nearly gone. At this crisis, one of his power- ful kinsmen procured for him the lucrative appointment of Clerk of the Journals to the House of Lords. The dread of qualifying himself by going through the necessary formalities in presence of the Lords, plunged him into the deepest distress. The seeds of insanity were al- ready in his frame, and after brooding a while over his condition, he became entirely insane, and attempted suicide. In the course of two years, under treatment at a private asylum, the cloud passed away, and he retired to a small country town where his brother resided. While living with his brother he formed an intimacy with the cler- gyman of the place, Eev. Mr. Unwin, and finally became an inmate of the family. After the death of Mr. Unwin, his widow, Mary Un- win, continued to watch over Cowper with a friendship that never faltered. The family removed, however, to Olney, the residence of the Rev. Mr. Newton ; and from that time John Newton and Mary Unwin are the main figures in the canvas which contains the picture of Cowper's life. Here he contributed some Hymns to the volume which Mr. Newton was preparing. His morbid melancholy again THE POETS. 121 returned, and he became once more entirely insane. On recovering from this second attack, Cowper amused himself with gardening, drawing, rearing hares, and writing poetry. A volume of his poems was published, but it attracted little attention and had small sales. At this time Lady Austen became one of the frequent guests of the household, and it was at her suggestion that Cowper wrote the inimi- table poem of John Gilpin, she having given him the outline of the story. The effect of this poem was electrical, not only upon the pub- lic, but upon the author. At Lady Austen's suggestion, Cowper next tried his hand at blank verse, the result being the Task, the subject as before being assigned by this most wise and judicious adviser. The Task was immediately and universally popular. It opened an alto- gether new field in English letters. This was followed by no less an undertaking than a new translation of Homer, which he completed in 1791, after seven years of continued labor. After this a deepening gloom began to settle on his mind, with occa- sional bright intervals. His life-long friend, Mary Unwin, died in 1796. " The unhappy poet would not believe that she was actually dead ; he went to see the body, and on witnessing the unaltered pla- cidity of death, flung himself to the other side of the room with a pas- sionate expression of feeling, and from that time he never mentioned her name, or spoke of her again." Cowper lingered on for three years or more, when death came at last to his release. John Newton. Rev. John Newton, 1725-1807, is indissolubly associated with the history and the writings of Cowper. Newton was a native of London. He went to sea at tlie age of eleven ; was engaged for some years in the slave-trade, experienced a religious conversion of an extraordinary character, and became afterwards a very zealous preacher. He was for seventeen years curate of the church at Olney, and he is chiefly known by his connection with that church. The Olney Hymns, selected and partly composed by Newton, Cowper, and James Mont- gomery, are Avell known, and form a marked feature in the history of English hyranody. Newton's writings are of the extreme evangelical type, and are noted for the rich vein of experimental religion that runs through them. Erasmus Darwin. Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802, attracted considerable attention both as a poet and a naturalist. Darwin was a physician by profession, 11 122 ENGLISH LITERATURE. and was educated at Cambridge. He wrote in a pleasing style, and tlie novelty and daring of some of his speculations caused his works to be a good deal read. The errors in his theories, however, were exposed by Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, and other metaphysi- cians, and his writings gradually subsided into comparative oblivion. His best known work is The Botanic Garden, a Poem, in two parts, Economy of Vegetation, and the Loves of Plants. Beattie. James Beattie, D. C. L., 1736-1803, Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in Marischal College, Aberdeen, was a friend and contempo- rary of Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, and others of that class. He is well known as a poet and as a writer on moral and met- aphysical subjects. Beattie's most popular work is the Minstrel, a poem in the Spenserian stanza. Of his prose works, the chief are: Essay on Truth, intended as a reply to Hume ; Evidences of the Chris- tian Religion ; Elements of Moral Science. The Essay on Truth met with great and immediate- favor. It brought him the offer of the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, which, however, he declined. It gained him also the acquaintance and intimacy of the most distinguished writers of the day, and a substantial token of royal favor in the shape of a pension of £200 per annum. Burns. Robert Burns, 1759-1796, was "by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of the people and lived and died in an humble condition." — Wilson. Burns was a poor ploughboy, with no advantages of education ex- cept those afibrded by the common country school. His early effu- sions were circulated at first in manuscript. Finding that they were in demand among his neighbors, he printed a volume of them at an obscure country town, in 1786. His special object in the publication was to get money to enable him to emigrate to Jamaica. The publi- cation yielded him a profit of £20, which seemed a fortune to the young author. He engaged his passage accordingly, sent his chest aboard the vessel, and was just about to set sail, when he received from Dr. Blacklock a letter inviting him to visit Edinburgh. The Doctor had fallen in with a copy of the poems, and encouraged Burns to be- lieve that an edition might be published in the capital. The poet changed at once his plans, and went to Edinburgh. There his wonderful abilities, in connection with the humbleness of his posi- THE DRAMATISTS. 123 tion, created a great sensation. Dugald Stewart, Kobertson the his- torian, Dr. Hugh Blair, and all that was most aristocratic in either the intellectual or the social circles of that reserved and haughty metrop- olis, gathered in admiring wonder around this inspired peasant. A new edition of his poems was printed, which brought him at once the handsome sum of £700. He was caressed and feted on all sides, and being of an ardent temperament, he yielded to the temptation which these social festivities presented. He fell into the habit of drinking to intoxication, from which he never totally recovered, though he made sundry attempts at reform. He died at the early age of thirty-seven. Grahame. Eev. James Grahame, 1765-1811, is favorably known by his poem, The Sabbath. Grahame was born in Glasgow, and educated at its University. He followed the law for a time, but afterwards entered the ministry of the English Church. He was very acceptable as a preacher, but was obliged to give up his curacy on account of ill health. His poetry is of a very serious cast, and not at all to the taste of such men as Byron, who calls him "sepulchral Grahame." For all that, he has substantial merits and not a few admirers. Mrs. Inehbald. Mrs. Elizabeth Inehbald, 1756-1821, was a writer of considerable celebrity at the close of the last century. She was a native of Suf- folk, the daughter of Mr, Simpson, a farmer. At the age of sixteen, slic came to London and made lier debut upon the stage. Soon after- wards she married Mr. Inehbald, a leading actor. Mrs. Inehbald was extremely successful as an actress until her retirement in 1789. From that time she devoted herself exclusively to dramatic literature, pub- lishing a number of comedies and farces, and editing The British The- atre, a collection of plays, in 25 vols., with biographical and critical remarks ; also the Modern Theatre, in 10 vols. II. THE DRAMATISTS. Sheridan. Kichard Brinsley Butler Sheridan, 1751-1816, was a brilliant Par- liamentary orator. His chief distinction, however, was as a drama- tist. In this respect, he is inferior to Shakespeare only. As mere acting plays, those of Sheridan are considered the best in the language. 124 * ENGLISH LITERATURE. His chief plays, Comedies, are the following : The Eivals, The Du- enna, The Critic, and The School for Scandal. The one last named is considered his masterpiece. Sheridan's fame from the authorship of these pieces was already very high. But he was destined to win other laurels, equally great. Having attracted the attention of the Whig party, he gained a seat in Parliament, and was an active supporter of Fox. In 1788, during the impeachment of Warren Plastings, Sheridan delivered his two so-called Begum speeches, the first of which was pronounced by acclamation the most wonderful single speech ever made in Parliament. When the orator had finished, the House was a scene of utter commotion and applause, cheering, and clapping of hands. So great was the confusion that no one else could be heard, and the House adjourned. It is greatly to be regretted that we have only a meagre and incorrect report of this wonderful performance. His other speeches, able as they are, do not justify any such extraordinary fame. Garriek. David Garriek, 1716-1779, the greatest of English actors, was also a man of letters, and was the intimate friend and associate of nearly all the great writers of England who were contemporary with him. In his youth Garriek went to school to Samuel Johnson, in Lichfield, and in 1736 master and pupil went to London together to seek their fortunes. Johnson became the autocrat among authors, Garriek the prince without a peer among actors. Foote. ^ Samuel Foote, 1722-1777, is sometimes called the "English Aris- tophanes." He wrpte a large number of comedies for his own acting, in a playhouse belonging to himself, the Little Theatre in the Hay- market. Foote's Dramatic Works have been published in 4 vols., 8vo. There is nothing specially notable in them, except their good- natured fun. Home. John Home, 1724-1808, acquired general celebrity by his play of Douglas. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and licensed to preach in the Church of Scotland. In 1757, he was obliged to withdraw from the ministry to avoid degradation, in cotisequence of having published, and had performed, his play of Douglas. He was the author of several plays, none of which, except the Douglas, met COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 125 with any success. This last, a tragedy, was greeted with enthusiasm on the occasion of its first rendering, and has maintained its position ever since. Several of its scenes are unsurpassed for efiectiveness upon the stage. III. MISCELLANEOUS PROSE WRITERS. Hannah More. Hannah More, 1745-1833, was a "bright particular star" in the firmament of letters all through three of the periods marked in the pres- ent treatise, those, namely, of Johnson, Cowper, and Walter Scott. But she culminated during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century, and to that period accordingly she has been assigned. Though never married, she acquired by courtesy, in her later years, the title of Mrs. Hannah More, according to a usage not then extinct in England. She wrote much both in verse and prose, but distinguished herself cliiefly in the latter. Of all writers of her day, of either sex, none exerted by their writings a purer influence ; and she is entitled to lasting remembrance for the services which she rendered in improving and elevating the standard of private morals. She was pre-eminently the moralist of her gener- ation. Hannah More's earliest productions were dramatic. She afterwards abandoned writing for the stage, as inconsistent with her Christian character, but produced several sacred dramas, and numerous poems. She is best known by her Moral Tales and her Contributions to the Cheap Repository Tracts. Among the latter is the famous Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. Among the former is Ccelebs in Search of a Wife. She also wrote several essays, the principal of which are Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education, and Hints towards forming the Character of a Young Princess (for Charlotte, Princess of Wales). Madame D'Arblay. Madame Frances D'Arblay, 1752-1840, daughter and biographer of the great historian of music, Dr. Burney, lived to the extreme age of eighty-eight, which brings her in one sense witliin the present gen- eration. But her main activity was in the eighteenth century, and she belongs really to the times of Johnson, Burke, Cowper, and Hannah More. Fanny was a shy, sensitive child, and at the age of eight did not know her letters. Her mother dying when Fanny was ten, and her 11^ 126 ENGLISH LITERATURE. father from over-indulgence not putting her under the control of a tutor, she grew up into womanhood pretty much " according to her own sweet will." The musical reputation of Dr. Burney made his house the resort of all the great men of letters, Johnson, Burke, Garrick, and others, and it was the brilliant conversation of these men that first gave a stimulus to the thoughts of the reserved, but all-observing girl. Evelina, her first work, was written, according to her own account, when she was about seventeen or eighteen. She kept the composition of it entirely to herself for several years, and then sent it anonymously for publication. It became at once extremely popular, and gained the applause of the highest critics then known to the nation. Several other novels followed, all extremely popular. She wrote also a Me- moir of her father. Dr. Burney, in 3 vols. Miss Burney had the ill-fortune to be appointed to the post of the Keeper of Robes to Queen Charlotte. The life to which she was here subjected, was one peculiarly unsuited to her sensitive nature ; and though treated with gentle kindness by her royal patrons, she felt the position to be an intolerable bondage. She was married in 1793 to a French otficer. Count D'Arblay, and in 1802 she accompanied him to Paris, where she remained until his death, in 1812. Her remaining years were spent in England. The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay were published after her death, in 7 vols., 8vo, and created considerable sensation on account of the eminent character of the persons among whom she had moved, and the unreserved nature of her observations. "Miss Burney did for the English novel what Jeremy Collier did for the English drama. She first showed that a tale might be written in which both the fashionable and the vulgar life of London might be exhibited with great force, and with l)roa(l comic humor, and which yet should not contain a single line inconsistent with rigid morality, or even with virgin delicacy. She took away the reproach which lay on a most useful and delightful species of composition. She vindicated the right of her sex to have an equal share in a fair and noble promise of letters. Burke had sat up all night to read her writings, and John- son had pronounced her superior to Fielding, when Rogers was still a school-boy, and Southey still in petticoats." — Macaulay. Dr. Burney. Charles Burney, 1726-1814, father of Fanny Burney, just noticed, published in 1773 a History of Music, which is still a standard on the subject of which it treats. Dr. Burney (he received from Oxford the unusual degree of Doctor of Music) was eminent as a musician and COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 127 a writer of music ; but gained his chief distinction by becoming the historian of the science. Mrs. Radeliffe. Mrs. Anna Kadcliffe, 1764-1823, attained great temporary distinc- tion as a novelist. One of her novels, the Mysteries of Udolpho, is unparalleled in its kind in English literature. About the beginning of this century Mrs. Kadcliffe was one of the bright stars of the lit- erary firmament, admired not merely by the vulgar worshippers of the novel, but by men of unquestioned genius. Sir Walter Scott, Talfourd, Dr. Warren, Byron, were among her enthusiastic readers. Yet so completely has the popular fancy changed, and the love of the un- natural and horrible been replaced by a taste for what is healthier, at least more life-like, that Mrs. Radeliffe is scarcely known to the public except by name, and scarcely read except by the professional student of literature. Her truly great contemporaries have waxed more and more in brightness, while she herself has waned into the obscurity of the upper shelves of the circulating library. Mackenzie. Henry Mackenzie, 1745-1831, is well known as a sentimental writer of this period, his Man of Feeling being an acknowledged classic in that line. Mackenzie's style resembles closely that of Sterne, and his wj-itings are nearly all of the sentimental order. They are superior to Sterne's in purity of morals, but are decidedly inferior in vigor of in- vention and play of humor. Paine. Thomas Paine, 1736-1809, a political and infidel writer of the last century, acquired great temporary notoriety, partly by his connection with the American and the French Revolutions, and partly by the reck- less hardihood of his writings. He sympathized warmly with the Americans in the contest with Great Britain, and in January, 1776, published the pamphlet. Common Sense, which made a prodigious sensation, and helped doubtless to pre- cipitate the crisis which took place on the 4th of July following. The terrible ferment of the French Revolution was of just the kind to awaken his active sympathies, and in 1791-2 he published in Lon- don the Rights of Man, in reply to Burke and in advocacy of the most extreme views of the French Republicans. The book had an enormous sale. Its views were so levelling and disorganizing in their 128 ENGLISH LITERATURE. scope, and its effect was so great upon the lower classes in Great Britain, who were already in an unsettled and dangerous condition, that the Government was alarmed, and caused Paine to be prosecuted for sedi- tion and libel. In 1794-0, Paine published in London and Paris the Age of Eeason, being a scurrilous attack on Christianity. Paine was a shallow man, whose knowledge was infinitesimal in proportion as his effrontery was infinite. The sensation that he produced was due to the peculiar cir- cumstances of the crisis in which he lived, more than to the ability of the -man. His conceit of himself and of what he had done, was of a piece with the rest of his career. He really believed that he had given the death-blow to Christianity. "I have now gone through the Bible as a man would go through a wood, with an axe on his shoul- der, to fell trees. Here they lie ; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may perhaps stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow." Paine returned to the United States in 1802, and died finally in the city of New York, in great obscurity, his closing years being marked by the coarsest profligacy and intemperance. Godwin. William Godwin, 1756-1836, is chiefly known by three works of an entirely different character: A Life of Chaucer, in two ponderous quarto volumes ; the novel of Caleb Williams, in which the element of the terrible was employed with a power hardly equalled elsewhere in English literature ; and an abstruse work on Political Justice, in which the attempt was made to undermine the entire fabric of society, morals, and religion. Godwin was the son of a Dissenting minister, and was himself, for some years, minister to a Dissenting congregation. But at the age of twenty -six he abandoned the ministry, and gave himself up to literature as a profession, making London his permanent residence. Adam Smith. Adam Smith, 1723-1790, was the ablest writer of his age on political economy, and one of the ablest of all ages. His work, the Wealth of Nations, is an acknowledged classic on that subject. To its author belongs the rare merit of having created a new department of study. Before Smith's work, it is true, other writers had thrown out hints and ideas on special topics, but Smith was the first to follow them out, to COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 129 reduce the obscure and isolated gropings of would-be reforms to system and co-operation, to establish, generalize, and elucidate, — in short, to create the study of political economy. The publication of the Wealth of Nations marked a new era in human research. Thinkers saw that they were in the presence of a new and almost unexpected power, that what had before been regarded as a confused and arbitrary jumbling of facts, was capable of being reduced to law and order, and that one of the great phases of social and political science must thenceforth be reconstructed from top to bottom. Some of the principles laid down by Smith have been aban- doned, others have been modified or expanded, new principles have been added. But, as a whole, the science of political economy is as Smith left it, and his book is perhaps the most readable manual for the beginner. Part of its success is due to the grace and vigor of its style. Paley. William Paley, D. D., 1743-1805, attained great and permanent celebrity by his writings on Moral Philosophy and kindred subjects. Paley's works are not so numerous as those of some divines of equal celebrity, but are of extraordinary excellence. They are Moral Phi- losophy, Natural Theology, Evidences of Christianity, and Horse Pau- linse. All these have been used as text-books in colleges and other institutions of learning, both in England and America, to an extent not equalled by any other set of books on the same subjects, and part of them are still used extensively, notwitlistanding the many and able treatises on these subjects which have appeared since the days of Paley. Paley's theory of morals, basing duty upon expediency, is regarded as unsound, and many of the practical duties which he deduced from it are considered lax. Yet such is the clearness of his reasoning, and so valuable is his work in the other portions of it, that many instruc- tors even now prefer Paley's book on Moral Philosophy to any other, making in the class-room the corrections which may be needed. His Natural Theology, proving the existence and perfections of God from the evidences of design in his works, has never been superseded, and it probably never will be. The work on the Evidences, though excellent, has not been considered quite equal to his other works. The Horse Paulinee, however, is unsurpassed as a specimen of ingenious reasoning from circumstantial evidence, and it will probably hold its own to the end of time. Dr. Paley wrote some other things, and published many sermons, I 130 ENGLISH LITERATURE. but the four works named are all that are worth remembering. Of all who have written on these subjects, he stands unequalled for the clearness with which he expresses his ideas, and it is to his unrivalled power in this respect, rather than to any originality or depth as a thinker, that he owes his great and long-continued popularity. Re id. Thomas Keid, D. D., 1710-1796, was an eminent Scotch metaphysi- cian. He was elected, in 1763, Professor of Moral Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen, and afterwards Professor in the University of Glasgow. The latter position he held until his resignation, in 1781. Dr. Eeid founded a new school of metaphysics. Its object was to combat the errors of Hume and Berkeley and other advocates of the Ideal Theory. The corner-stone of his philosophy was his doctrine of Immediate Perception. Previous philosophers had said that the senses give us ideas, and the mind perceives these ideas. Keid con- tended that the mind perceives the objects themselves directly. An- other prominent point in his system was his doctrine of Common Sense. Previous philosophers had maintained that all knowledge is built up from experience originating in sensation. Keid asserted that certain elementary truths or principles are perceived by the mind in- tuitively, without reference to sensation or to the external world ; that these truths, both intellectual and moral, are perceived alike by all men, and show thereby the existence in all of a faculty which he calls the Common Sense. Keid's immediate disciple and the chief advo- cate of his philosophy was Dugald Stewart. The system, as a whole, has not held its ground. But some of his leading ideas, particularly those in regard to Immediate Perception and Common Sense or direct intuitions of intellectual and moral truths, are a part of the commonly received doctrines of the present day. Keid's chief works are An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense ; and Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. Adam Ferguson. Adam Ferguson, LL.D., 1724-1816, is favorably known both as a philosophical writer and an historian. He was for many years Pro- fessor in the University of Edinburgh, first in the department of Natu- ral Philosophy, and afterwards in that of Moral Philosophy. His principal works are Institutes of Moral Philosophy, and a History of the Roman Kepublic, 5 vols., Svo. The work last named should COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 131 be read as an introduction to Gibbon's Decline and Fall. Gibbon takes up the story where Ferguson leaves off. Hugh Blair. Hugh Blair, D.D., 1718-1800, had a high reputation in his day as a writer of Sermons, and as the author of a course of Lectures on Rhetoric. Blair was one of a school of writers that prevailed in Edin- burgh near the close of the last century, who were remarkable for cor- rectness rather than for force and originality. His Sermons, the pub- lication of which began in 1777, had a greater popularity than any ever before known for works of that description. Dr. Johnson was unbounded in his admiration of them. The Sermons circulated rapidly and widely, wherever the English language was spoken, and they were translated into almost all the languages of Europe. After a time, however, a reaction took place ; the Sermons began to be criticised as wanting in spiritual unction, and as artificial and stiff in composition. They wanted, it was said, that directness of purpose and expression, the earnestness and reality, which are essential to such writings. They have now fallen almost into oblivion ; and when mentioned at all, receive an estimate as much below, as the estimate of seventy years ago was above, their real worth. Besides the Sermons, Blair published Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. This work also was popular from the first, but its im- mediate popularity was not so great as that of the Sermons ; the Rhet- oric, however, has survived the Sermons ; it has been more used as a text-book on that subject, both in England and the United States, than any other book, and it is still widely used in both countries. Campbell. George Campbell, D.D., 1719-1796, Principal of Marischal College, was the author of a valuable work, the Philosophy of Rhetoric. Campbell wrote several other important works, among them A Dis- sertation on Miracles, in reply to Hume. Home Tooke. John Home Tooke, 1736-1812, wrote a work, the Diversions of Parley, which has exerted an extensive and lasting influence on English philology. In this work, the author undertakes to give a critical analysis of language, and particularly of words as the elements of language, and to establish the principles of lexicography and of verbal criticism. Tooke's learning was not sufficient for such an 132 ENGLISH LITERATURE. undertaking. But he had great acuteness; he made some most happy guesses as to the origin and force of particular words ; and he effectually demolished most of the traditional rubbish which had gathered around the subject. His work, though now in the main ob- solete, did a great and timely service to English philology. Warton. Thomas Warton, 1728-1790, is chiefly known by his History of English Poetry. Warton was educated at Oxford, where he was suc- cessively Fellow, Professor of Poetry, and Professor of Ancient His- tory. He was also Poet-Laureate from 1785 to 1790. He is mainly known by the work already named, A History of English Poetry, 3 vols., 4to. The history is brought down only to the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is not very attractive in style, and not alto- gether accurate ; yet it contains much valuable matter not easily found elsewhere, and it did important service in calling attention to several neglected authors, whose works have since, in consequence of Warton' s remarks, and still more in consequence of his quotations from them, been thoroughly explored. Sir William Jones. Sir William Jones, 1746-1794, is the most distinguished name in the history of English Philology. He was born in London ; studied at Harrow and Oxford ; was private tutor in the family of Earl Spen- cer; was admitted to the bar in 1774; and in 1783 was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court at Fort William, India. Other distinguished British philologists, such for instance as Bent- ley, Porson, and Wilson, have surpassed him in accuracy of research in special fields, but none have equalled him in breadth of vision. At a time when the science of language had not yet been born, he was a proficient in many widely different languages. But the service by which his name will ever be remembered is the presentation of- the claims of the Sanscrit to the notice of European scholars. He was the first to announce the great fact that Sanscrit, Latin, and Greek are kindred tongues. This principle, afterwards developed so successfully by Bopp in his Comparative Grammar, has gained for Sir William Jones the title of Father of Comparative Philology. For, although the science has advanced wonderfully since then, and is now made to embrace all languages and dialects, there is no doubt but that the recognition of the great Indo-European family was the germ from which the whole has sprung. COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 133 Bishop Percy. Thomas Percy, 1728-1811, gained for himself a permanent place in English literature by his publication of the Eeliques of Ancient English Poetry. This collection of old English ballads, it is not going too far to say, marked a new era in literature. It introduced a taste for the pure and healthy folk-ballad, which had been lost during and since the age of the Eestoration. The great minds in England and on the continent derived new delight and inspiration from the study of these Reliques of a half-forgotten age. We have only to turn to the biogra- phies of men like Goethe, Burger, Schiller, Scott, Byron, and Words- worth, to learn of their effect. Since Percy's day the good work begun by him has gone on unceasingly. Other and larger stores of folk-song have been discovered, more accurate scholarship and sounder criticism have developed themselves, but still the labors of Bishop Percy are not forgotten, and will not be so long as a, genuine love of naiive poetry Walker. John Walker, 1732-1807, a celebrated elocutionist of London, is widely known from his connection with the English Dictionary. Walker was in early life an actor. At the age of thirty-five he left the stage, and engaged in teaching, which after two years he abandoned, and devoted himself to public lectures on Elocution. These he deliv- ered with great applause in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Walker had -a quick ear, and was a careful observer of the sounds of the language ; and by taking note of the way in which the several words were uttered by educated people, and by the best public speakers, he was enabled to give a standard for the pronunciation of English words. His Pronouncing Dictionary became an authority, not on the ground of his dictum, but because he had carefully and judiciously selected for each word or set of words that pronunciation which was used by genteel and educated people. It was an exact exhibit, pre- pared by an expert, of the actual pronunciation of English words by good society. The work was so well done, that it helped greatly to fix what is in itself arbitrary and fluctuating, and Walker's pronunciation has continued accordingly without material change to the present day — almost a century from the time when he began his work. Walker was not a lexicographer. He was simply an orthoepist and elocution- ist. All that he contributed to the Dictionary was to mark the pro- nunciation. 12 134 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Lindley Murray. Lindley Murray, 1745-1826, holds about the same relation to Eng- lish Grammar that Walker holds to the English Dictionary. Murray's Grammar was, to many generations of school-boys and school-girls, the court in the last resort on all questions of correct speaking and writing. Murray, though an American by birth and education, is counted an English writer, as he became an Englishman by residence, and wrote all his works in England. He was born at Swatara, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and was educated in Philadelphia, at an academy of the Society of Friends, to which body he belonged. He began as a lawyer ; abandoned law for the counting-house ; retired early with a competence ; and then lived for some years on the Hudson, three miles above New York. In 1784, being a little over forty, he re- moved to England, and lived there the remainder of his days. His main works were his English Grammar and his English Keader. These, though marked by no special originality or scholarship, yet by their general correctness, and by their being pioneers in the ground which they covered, acquired a prodigious influence which is not even yet spent. Murray was no philologist, and no scholar in the proper acceptation of the term ; he was not even a grammarian, as the word is now under- 'stood. But he had a large fund of common sense, and he reduced to a practical form the grammatical principles advanced first by Wallis and afterwards by Bishop Lowth. As English Grammar before that time had only begun to be a common study, scholars previously get- ting their knowledge of grammar from their study of Latin, Murray's book came in to supply a want just beginning to rise; and it acquired, and for a long time held, exclusive possession of the field. His Gram- mar was in various forms, from 2 vols., 8vo, down to small abridg- ments in 18mo, but the one chiefly in use was the 12mo, with which most readers are acquainted. Murray's English Eeader, with the Introduction, and the Sequel, had an enormous sale, both in England and America. Indeed, they are still extensively used in both countries, and probably always will be used. A better selection has never been made for such a purpose, and the books deserved the popularity which they enjoyed. They cannot adequately represent English literature at this day, for many of the best things which exist in the language were not yet written when Murray's compilations were made. But up to the year 1800, these Readers contain the very marrow and fatness of what English literature had to give. COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 135 IV. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. The Wesleys. John Wesley, 1703-1791, and Charles Wesley, 1708-1788, are dis- tinguished as the founders of Methodism, the greatest religious move- ment since the Eeformation. In their labors in England and elsewhere, the work of organization and management fell upon John, whose talents for administration have rarely been equalled. Charles was a zealous and efficient preacher, but is especially noted as a hymnist. A vein of poetry seems to have run through all the members of this remarkable family. The father, Samuel, wrote several volumes of poetry on religious subjects. Even John, in the midst of his over- whelming cares and labors, wrote many hymns, some of them excel- lent. Samuel, another brother, published a volume of poems. But in Charles, the associate of John in the great work of founding Meth- odism, this kind of faculty was developed to an extraordinary degree, and he turned it to excellent account in the work in which they were both engaged. The Hymns of Charles Wesley were a great help to John in giving form and expression to the new religious movement. No man has written so many hymns as Charles Wesley, and no one has written so many that have obtained general acceptance. As a lit- erary monument, they are worthy to be placed beside the other great productions of genius. John Wesley lived to his eighty-eighth year, and continued his life of incessant ministerial labors to the last, — travelling, preaching, and writing. It is said that during his ministry of fifty-three years, he travelled 225,000 miles, a great part of it on horseback, and preached more than 40,000 sermons. His printed works, as published immedi- ately after his death, filled 32 vols., Svo. A later edition, revised and condensed, is in 14 vols., Svo. It is impossible, in a work like the present, to particularize in regard to this great man. He wrote, as occasion required, on almost every topic growing out of the exigencies of a new religious community, — expository, hortatory, controversial, — and although no one work of his stands out as a special monument of genius, few men have left upon the minds of their race so strong and abiding an impression of their own individuality. Whitefield. George Whitefield, 1714-1770, was the founder of the Calvinistic branch of the Methodists, and was the greatest preacher of his day, if not the greatest uninspired preacher of all time. The accounts given 136 ENGLISH LITERATURE. of the effects of Whitefield's eloquence border on the marvellous, and would be set down to credulity, were they not authenticated by so many and such unimpeachable witnesses. That these effects were in a great measure the fruits of mere oratory, — of voice, tone, and ges- ture, — is evident from the fact that his-published sermons are decid- edly commonplace, giving the reader no idea of unusual power or eloquence. Whitefield's Works and Life have been published in 7 vols., 8vo. The contents consist of Letters, Journals, and Sermons. Toplady. Augustus M. Toplady, 1740-1778, was one of the ultra Calvinists of the English Church, and was noted for his assaults upon John Wes- ley on points of doctrine. Besides these controversial writings, Top- lady was the author of a large number of Hymns, many of them of great excellence. Some of Toplady's Hymns are found in nearly every collection. The hymn, Rock of Ages, the best probably in the language, will keep his memory fresh in the heart of the Christian Church long after his sharp controversial essays are forgotten. MeKnight. James MeKnight, 1721-1800, is celebrated as a Commentator and as a Harmonist. MeKnight is known chiefly by two works, each a mon- ument of laborious diligence and scholarship. The first was a Har- mony of the Four Gospels, in which the natural order of each is pre- served, with a paraphrase and notes, McKnight's Harmony is one of the standard works in the literature of the subject. His other great work, on which he spent, it is said, nearly thirty years, is a New Lit- erar Translation from the Original Greek of All the Apostolical Epis- tles, witli a Commentary and Notes, philological, critical, explanatory, and practical, 4 vols., 4to. MeKnight on the Epistles is also one of the standard works which every theologian wishes to have in his library. Neither of these works is exhaustive or final. The science of her- meneutics has made great advances since McKnight's day. Yet they are works of great ability and of original research, and no interpreter even now can safely pass them by as superseded. Milner. Joseph Milner, 1744-1797, a learned scholar and divine of the English Church, besides several works of less importance, published A History of the Church of Christ, in 5 vols., 8vo, which has been often printed, and which has led to much discussion. COWPER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 137 Ne>Areome. William Newcome, D. D., 1729-1800, Archbishop of Armagh, in Ireland, is well known by his Harmony of the Gospels, and by his various writings on the subject of a new revision of the English version of the Scriptures. Watson. Kichard Watson, D. D., 1737-1816, a learned Bishop and theolo- gian of the Church of England, is known chiefly by an Apology for Christianity, in reply to Gibbon, and an Apology for the Bible, in re- ply to Paine. He published also a collection of Theological Tracts, 6 vols., 8vo, selected from various authors, and intended for the use of theological students. Watson's Theological Tracts have an excellent name, and have had an extensive circulation. 12* CHAPTER XII. Sir Walter Scott and his Contemporaries. (1800-1830.) The chief public events during the first quarter of the present cen- tury were the Napoleonic wars, and the political settlements which followed the downfall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne of France. No English writer during this period filled so large a space in the public mind as Sir Walter Scott. The writers of this period may be divided into six sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Byron ; 2. The Novelists, beginning with Scott ; 3. The Reviewers and Political Writers, beginning with Gifibrd ; 4. Philosophical and Scientific Writers, beginning with Dugald Stewart ; 5. Religious and Theological Writers, beginning with Scott the Com- mentator ; 6. Miscellaneous Writers, beginning with Mrs. Barbauld. I. THE POETS. Byron. George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824, was, on the whole, the greatest English poet of his day, although he had many illustrious competitors. His poems are indeed very unequal, and abound in pas- sages open to criticism. At the same time, it should be remembered that the amount which he wrote was large. If he often falls below the standard, and much that he has written could well be spared, a large amount still remains that is of a very high order of poetry, and there are passages in his works that are unsurpassed by anything in the lan- guage, except in the writings of Shakespeare. 138 SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPOR AEIES. 139 Probably no English poet that has ever lived was so much read, quoted, and canvassed, during his lifetime, as Lord Byron. Everything. in his social position, in his personal history and character, and in the character of his writings, seemed to contribute to this result. He was of noble family, though his estate had been impoverished by spend- thrift and prodigal ancestors. In person, though not faultless, he had yet such attractions of form and features and voice as amounted almost to a fascination. His talents, if not of the very highest order, were yet wonderful, and were precisely of the kind that dazzle and bewilder. Byron's first attempt at authorship led to an issue at arms with the highest critical authority then known, the Edinburgh Eeview, and by the very fierceness of the attack and reply brought his name imme- diately to every one's mouth. His marriage only led to an open scandal, the mystery of which is not even yet solved ; and by the high social position of the parties caused every utterance of the poet to be watched and analyzed. In addition to these things, the peculiar and irregular style of his lordship's writings, as well as of his life, caused everything to be in request that came from his pen. Byrojj's first publication, issued at the age of nineteen, was Hours of Idleness. It contained little worthy of notice, and it might have passed quietly into oblivion but for tlie ferocious criticism upon it by the Edinburgh Eeview, then at the height of its power. Byron was furious, and under the impulse of his first burst of passion, he wrote, almost at white heat, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in which he slashed away, right and left, witli great injustice, but with a degree of daring and vigor that gained for him at once the public ear and sympathy. He afterwards condemned his youthful poems as heartily as the Reviewer had done. He also acknowledged the injustice of his invective. But the affair gave him instant notoriety. It awakened him also to a consciousness of his powers. Soon after this affair, Byron travelled on the continent, and gave the result of his observations in the first portion of his next and greatest poem, Childe Harold. If the first publication made him notorious, this made him famous. Returning home, he entered Parliament, and took some part in public affairs. He was also married to Miss Millbanke, a lady of for- tune ; but after living together for a few months, they separated, for reasons admitted to be not creditable to him, though never clearly divulged. Lord Byron after this left England never to return. His remaining days were spent in Switzerland, Italy, and Greece, and he died in the noble efibrt to aid the Greeks in their struggle for in- dependence. 140 ENGLISH LITEKATURE. Some of his other works, produced mostly during the irregular life that he led on the continent, were Sardanapalus, a Tragedy ; Cain, a Mystery ; The Vision of Judgment ; Don Juan ; The Prisoner of Chillon ; The Bride of Abydos ; The Dream ; Mazeppa ; The Corsair ; The Siege of Corinth ; Lara ; Parisina, etc. The Memoirs of him by Moore must also be considered in giving an account of Byron's works, as these Memoirs are made up to a great extent of his own Letters. Byron has so identified himself with his works that the two must be estimated together ; and the settled judgment of the world is that he was a bad man. He had many shining and some noble qualities ; but he was a selfish libertine, both in his life and opinions, and he deserves the neglect towards which he is slowly but surely gravitating. Moore. Thomas Moore, 1779-1852, survived most of the writers who were his contemporaries, but his chief works were written in the early part of this century. Although he lived till 1852, he is associated in his- tory with Byron, Shelley, Southey, and the men of their time. His most important works are LalJa Rookh, a long poem, bounded on eastern legend and gorgeous with oriental imagery, and his Irish Melodies. The last-named are unquestionably his best. Few poets have been more successful than Moore, and this success is due, in part, to the consistency with which he devoted himself to one style of poetry. He never sufiered himself to be tempted by am- bition into writing on grand themes, for which he felt himself unfitted. His verses are the smoothest and softest in the language, and never rise above the level of average sentiment. Even his Irish Melodies, which profess to give the spirit of the Irish people, are anything but true folk-songs. They have not the intensity and abruptness of pas- sion characteristic of that kind of verse. Moore is always graceful in his imagery, but never sublime ; emotional, but not impassioned. The licentiousness which disfigured his earlier works disappeared in the later ones. Still, even at his best, Moore is not a grand lyric poet. He is merely a singer of sweet verse. Shelley. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822, was a poet of great and original genius, whose career was in many respects like that of Byron, with whom indeed he was intimately associated. While a student at Oxford Shelley printed, in London, a pamphlet headed A Defence of Atheism. It was intended, as he afterwards SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPOK ARIES. 141 asserted, merely as a sort of dialectic challenge, probably after the fashion of the scholastics of the Middle Ages. Had he been content with merely publishing the pamphlet, the matter might have been ignored. But, in his youthful enthusiasm, he pressed himself so con- spicuously and so persistently upon the attention of the University authorities, that they were forced to expel him publicly, as an atheist. A few months afterwards he made a runaway match with the daugh- ter of a retired hoj.el-keeper. There does not appear to have been much love on Shelley's part. Before the end of three years they were separated. Two. years after the separation (1816) Mrs. Shelley com- mitted suicide by drowning. Soon after the death of his first wife, Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, with whom he had been travelling on the continent. In 1818 he left England never to see it again. The remaining four years of his life were passed in Italy, during a part of which time he was very intimate with Byron. On June 30, 1822, he was drowned by the upsetting of a boat in the Bay of Spezzia. His body was washed ashore, and, in accordance with the Tuscan quarantine law then prevailing, was burned by the authorities. The ashes were deposited in Home. His earliest work of note. Queen Mab, published in 1813, is little more than a treatise in defence of Atheism, full of conceits, and offer- ing occasionally fine passages. The best of his long poems are the Prometheus Unbound, and the Adonais, or Elegy on Keats. Some of his minor poems are surpassingly beautiful. ' Keats. John Keats, 1796-1821, was a poet of great promise, who died be- fore reaching the full maturity of his powers. His principal poems are Endymion, Hyperion, and the Eve of St. Agnes. Kirke White. Henry Kirke White, 1785-1806, gave in very early life evidence of poetical genius, but died before accomplishing anything of perma- nent value. White's place is among those poets who attract us more through sympathy with their adverse fate than by the intrinsic value of their productions. His poems unquestionably possess merit, but not such merit as entitles the poet to rank in the first or even the second class. His verses are rather plaintive and agreeable than vig- orous. The best known of them are : The Star of Bethlehem, To an Early Primrose, Song of the Consumptive, Savoyard's Return, etc. 142 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Campbell. Thomas Campbell, 1777-1844, has an honored place among the fixed stars of the poetical firmament. His poems are not so consider- able in amount as those of some other writers. But there is an excel- lence and finish in all that he did write that secures for him a perma- nent place in letters. Campbell was born and educated in Glasgow, and was early distin- guished for his proficiency in classical studies. His first publication, the Pleasures of Hope, at once gave him rank as a poet of mark. Being on a visit to the continent, he was a spectator of the battle of Hohenlinden, and commemorated the scene in the brilliant poem with which we are all familiar. While abroad, he wrote two other of his most popular lyrics. Ye Mariners of England, and The Exile of Erin. On returning to Scotland, he wrote Lochiel's Warning ; subsequently appeared Gertrude of Wyoming ; The Battle of the Baltic ; The Pil- grim of Glencoe, and other Poems. As a lyric and didactic poet, Campbell has few superiors in English literature. Some of his poems seem absolutely perfect. Rogers. Samuel Kogers, 1763-1855, the banker, poet, art collector, and giver of breakfasts, is as well known by his Pleasures of Memory as is Campbell by the Pleasures of Hope. Kogers was the son of a banker, and inherited, with his younger brother, a profitable business, from the active management of which he retired when little more than thirty. The remaining sixty years of his protracted life were passed in the cultivation of letters, the arts, and society. He gathered around his social board all that was genial and distinguished in each successive generation. Like Henry Crabb Robinson, he remained a bachelor. Indeed, there is throughout the lives of both a striking parallelism. There is, however, this difierence, that Rogers is known chiefly by his original works, Robinson by his diary. Although Rogers lived almost to our day, his works belong to a former generation. His Pleasures of Memory appeared in 1792, and Italy, his greatest work, in 1823. Rogers is a finished versifier, and his lines betray a cultured mind. Especially in his Italy does he show himself to be a man of great liberality in his judgments of what might have been distasteful to him as an Englishman and a Protestant. There can be no doubt that he has exercised a wholesome influence, indirectly, upon the SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 143 development of English literature, by widening tlie range of its sym- pathies and its culture. When we compare him, however, with his great contemporaries, Byron, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, we can scarcely fail to perceive that he was lacking in real poetic inspi- ration. Southey. Robert Southey, 1774-1843, was another of the great literary celeb- rities in the earlier part of the present century. His fame and for- tunes are intimately associated with those of Coleridge and Words- worth. He was not equal to either of them in genius, but he had abilities of a high order. He was methodical and unwearied in labor, and he made himself, while he lived, a magnate in the world of letters. Southey' s early career was in striking contrast with the latter part of his life. At Westminster School, he was expelled for a satire on corporal punishment. At Oxford, he became an ultra radical in politics and a Unitarian in religion. Soon afterwards he formed, with Coleridge, the plan of founding a " pantisocracy " in Pennsylvania, but, as neither of them had any money, the plan was abandoned. After essaying the law, and one or two other projects, he finally set- tled down to literary occupation. The once enthusiastic radical and Unitarian now became the staunch supporter of Church and State. He fixed his residence, in 1803, at Greta Hall, not far from Words- worth, in that lovely region which has become famous under the name of the *' lake district " of England. Here, in literary labor and seclusion, he passed the remainder of his days. Southey's works are extremely voluminous, both in prose and verse, and cover a wide range of subjects. Southey the poet, so famous in his day, and ranked with Wordsworth, Byron, Scott, and Coleridge, is now comparatively ignored. His extravagance and want of naturalness are repugnant to the tastes of this realistic age. His poems abound indeed in beautiful and striking passages, but are faulty in conception and tedious in execution. Some of his prose works, on the contrary, such as the Life of Nelson and the Life of Wesley, will always rank among English prose classics. Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were grouped together, under the title of " The Lake Poets," by the Edinburgh Review. In one sense, the epithet had some foundation, for they all lived near each other, in what is known as the Lake region of England. But if in- tended to mark a school of poetry, the term was a complete mis- nomer. It would be impossible to find in English history any other 144 ENGLISH LITERATURE. three contemporaries that have so few features in common, or who have borrowed so little inspiration one from the other. Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, was, of all the contemporary writers, the man most endowed by nature with genius. But the fit- ful and irregular character of his mental action prevented his accom- plishing any great and completed work commensurate with his acknowledged genius. His poetic fame rests on two poems, both of singular, almost supernatural power ; yet one, Christabel, is only a fragment, the other. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, more nearly complete in itself, is only a part of an incompleted whole. The like is true of his prose writings, — they are, at the best, only splendid fragments. Coleridge was at first a pupil of Christ Hospital, where he gained distinction for scholarship, as he did afterwards when a student at Cambridge. But being disappointed in a love-affair while at the University, he left the place without graduation, and enlisted by stealth in the army. In 1794, he became intimate with Southey. Both of them at that time were ardent republicans, and admirers of the French Revolu- tion. Both also were Unitarians in religion. Needy, restless, and full of the spirit of adventure, the young poets devised the scheme already named of emigrating with some friends to America, and there founding on the bank of the Susquehanna a Utopian republic, or PantisGcracy, the distinguishing feature of which should be a community of goods. Through the liberality of Josiah and Thomas Wedgewood, the well-known potters, Coleridge was enabled in 1798 to go to Germany, where he studied with great diligence in the Uni- versity of Gottingen. On returning to England, he settled at Kes- wick, in the Lake District of Westmoreland, where also Southey and Wordsworth resided. A few years later, Coleridge renounced Uni- tarianism, and adopted the creed of the Anglican Church ; he made a like change in his political opinions, having become disgusted with the excesses of the French Republicans. Plis habits of living being irregular, and his health failing, he fell into the way of taking opium, which added greatly to his ofher infirmities, and made him for years a most pitiable spectacle. He was rescued from this condition, how- ever, and spent his declining years in the hospitable refuge of a gen- erous physician, Dr. Gilman, of London. The universal testimony of competent judges is, that Coleridge's SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 145 natural endowments were of the very highest order. Method and industry, such method and industry as mark the career of Tennyson, of Milton, and of Shakespeare, would have made him the equal, pos- sibly the superior, of any of these great men. Even from the desul- tory and fitful efforts of his genius which remain, he must be regarded as one of the great men of all time. His powers as a conversationist, or rather as a talker, for he did not converse, have probably never been equalled ; and had there been a Boswell to gather up all these brilliant sayings which fell from his lips, the record would have been of inestimable value. Much of his conversation has been preserved in the Table-Talk, published after his decease. But we have no such minute report as that which Boswell gave of l5r. Johnson. Works. — Coleridge's works are chiefly the following: The Kime of the Ancient Mariner ; Christabel ; Aids to Reflection ; Lectures on Shakespeare ; Table-Talk ; Biographia Literaria. Joanna Baillie. Joanna Baillie, 1764-1851, was a dramatist of great celebrity, con- temporary with Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh, Jefirey, Southey, Byron, and Coleridge, and was eminent even among those great names. She was born near Glasgow, Scotland, but spent most of her life and achieved her principal literary successes in the neigh- borhood of London. Her dramas were published under the title of Plays on the Pas- sions, her plan being to make each passion the subject of two plays, a tragedy and a comedy. They are intended rather for reading than for representation. She herself did not frequent the theatre, and was not familiar with its arrangements. As reading - plays, they are accepted by the highest critical authorities as among the grandest works of the poetical art. » Mrs. Hemans. Mrs. Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794-1835, was, during her life, a leading favorite, her poems being read, admired, and quoted by almost everybody, and on almost all occasions. Mrs. Hemans was a native of Liverpool, daughter of a Mr. Browne, a merchant of that city. She was married at eighteen to Captain Hemans, of the British army. The union was not a happy one, and, after living together for six years, they separated. Captain Hemans went to Italy to take care of himself, and remained there; Mrs. 13 K 146 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Hemans remained at home to rear and educate the five sons who were the fruits of their ill-assorted marriage. It redounds to her honor certainly that these domestic infelicities found no voice in her sono-. She bore her griefs in dignified silence, and did not, like Byron, coin her heart-pangs into marketable verse. Mrs. Hemans wrote no long poems, but a large number of occasional pieces, and at the time of her death was an almost universal favorite, both in England and America. Even Sir Archibald Alison speaks of her as a rival to Coleridge ! But her reputation has been steadily on the wane for the last thirty or forty years. The truth is, she wrote pleasing things with infinite prettiness, but she had no true creative genius. Elizabeth Landon. Letitia Elizabeth Landon, afterwards Mrs. Maclean, and generally known as L. E. L., 1802-1838, was one of the literary celebrities in the early part of this century. She was a native of London, and daughter of Dr. Landon, Dean of Exeter. In 1838, she was married to Mr. George Maclean, Governor of Cape Coast Castle, and sailed for her new home. There, in October of the same year, she died from an accidental overdose of prussic acid, — an article which she had been in the habit of taking for hysteric affections. Miss Landon had attained a high reputation, especially by her poetry, and was at the time of her death one of the celebrities of the literary world. She was undoubtedly a woman of genius, and had she lived, she might have achieved substantial and permanent greatness. But her works, when read at the distance of thirty or forty years from the time of their composition, and apart from the romantic circumstances of her life, do not confirm the judgment of her contemporaries. Crabbe. George Crabbe, 1754-1832, is the poet of the poor and the lowly. Though not so much read as he once was, he still holds his place as a favorite with the public. Crabbe was born in humble circumstances, and in working his way upward encountered many hardships. The first poem of his that obtained a marked success was The Vil- lage. It contained vivid descriptions of scenes among the poor, such as he himself had been familiar with, and it was instantly and thor- oughly popular. After that, whatever he produced was in demand. His other poems are : The Parish Register, The Borough, Tales in Verse, and Tales of the Hall. SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 147 The chief characteristic of his poetry is the extreme accuracy of the descriptions, and his partiality for subjects which are in themselves dull and even forbidding. He was undoubtedly a poet of great power and even, at times, of tenderness, but his pathos is usually linked to something coarse and humiliating. The reader is affected, but he is not drawn to read a second time. Heber. Eeginald Heber, D.D., 1783-182G, is justly celebrated for his noble work as a missionary Bishop in India, and for his missionary hymn, "From Greenland's icy mountains." Heber was educated at Oxford, where he was distinguished for his classical scholarship, and for the elegance of his English style. His learning, accomplishinents, and genius would have insured him high preferment in the church, had he remained at home. In accepting the Bishopric at Calcutta, he was influenced by the true self-denying spirit of a Christian minister, and he entered upon its duties with the great- est zeal. He died in India, at the early age of forty-three. His principal works are : Palestine, a Poem, which gained a prize at Oxford, while the author was a student there ; Hymns, adapted to the Weekly Church Service ; and A Journey through India, 2 vols. Bishop Heber was one of the most accomplished and scholarly divines that the Church of England has produced in modern times. His one Missionary Hymn, however, will survive all else that he wrote or did, and will carry his memory to the latest generation. Hogg. James Hogg, 1770-1835, is known as " The Ettrick Shepherd." He was born in a cottage on the banks of the Ettrick Elver in Selkirkshire, Scotland, and passed his early life as a shepherd. His most celebrated work was the Queen's Wake, a collection of ballads. Like Burns, Hogg was at one time the lion of Scotch society. The latter part of his life was spent in rustic retirement. Hogg's poetry has received its full measure of praise, and although no longer the fashion, is still much read. The poems are by no means equal in exe- cution, but those that are good are very good — the sparkling emana- tions of a pure poetic fancy. Bloomfield. Eobert Bloomfield, 1766-1823, an unlettered shoemaker, while working in a garret with six or seven others, composed a poem, the 148 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Farmer's Boy, which set all England ablaze, and made its author, for the time, " the observed of all observers." In three years, twenty-six thousand copies of the Farmer's Boy were sold, — an enormous sale for those days, — and the book was reprinted on the continent, besides being translated into French, Italian, and Latin. The whole of this poem was composed in the author's head and completed, before a line of it was written. Bloomfield is not much read now. The quiet scenes of country life which he describes are too tame to suit the present taste. Besides, the universal and romantic circumstances attending his introduction to the literary world led naturally, for a time, to an exaggerated estimate. His work was compared, not with the great works of all time, but with what might be expected from a poor, uneducated laborer, working in his garret in the daily toil and struggle for bread. Pollok. Robert Pollok, 1799-1827, acquired for a time a prodigious reputa- tion by his poem, the Course of Time. Pollok was a native of Scot- land. He studied at the University of Glasgow, and was about enter- ing the ministry when cut down by disease, brought on by excessive study. His poem was at one time a great favorite, and is still read and admired by many. The commonly received opinion is, that it has many good and even brilliant passages, but that, as a whole, it is weak in conception, and weak in execution. It is the work of an immature mind. In passing judgment upon the Course of Time, however, it should be kept in mind that its author died before reaching maturity. For one of his age it is certainly a remarkable production, leaving on the mind of the reader a deep regret that the author could not have attained to full development. II. THE NOVELISTS. Sir Walter Seott. Sir Walter Scott, 1771-1832, after placing himself among the fore- most writers of his day as a poet, outstripped both himself and them by his unbounded success as a novelist. Even as a very young boy, Scott was noted for his ability as a story-teller. In the High-School, and at the University, he was the idol of a select circle, who gathered around him in recess hours, to listen delighted to his improvisations. His three great poems were the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805, Marmion, 1808, and the Lady of the Lake, 1810. In five years, he had placed himself at the head of his generation. SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 149 We of the present day, with our tardy and carefully discriminating appreciation, find it difficult to realize the unbounded enthusiasm with which the men and women of fifty years ago read, or rather devoured these poems. The author's pecuniary profits from the sale of his poems were equal to his literary laurels. He purchased Abbotsford, near Melrose Abbey, and spent immense sums upon the estate, in the effort to convert it into a magnificent baronial mansion of the old style. Living here in princely style, he made Abbotsford famous throughout the literary world, a synonym for lavish hospitality and fraternal re- union. To Abbotsford betook itself year after year all that was famous in art, literature, and science. Men of every country and profession were welcomed to its hospitable walls, and peer, prelate, and aspirant after fame came and went in ceaseless succession. Meanwhile the great wizard himself, the spell that kept together this gay concourse, was not resting on his laurels. In 1814 appeared, anonymously, Waverly, the first of the magnificent series of novels which goes by that name. The authorship was immediately ascribed to Scott, but persistently repudiated. In quick succession came Guy Mannering, the Antiquary, Old Mortality, Kob Eoy, the Heart of Midlothian, the Bride of Lammermoor, year by year one or more, until the secret could no longer be kept, and it was proclaimed to the world that Scotland's greatest poet was also the greatest novelist of his age. But the picture was soon to have its dark side. In 1826 Constable, and the Ballantynes, both large publishing firms, failed disastrously. Scott, who had been for some time a secret partner, was involved in the ruin, and was liable for their joint debts, amounting to over half a million of dollars. With heroic courage he gave up his estate at Abbotsford in part-payment, and devoted the remainder of his life to writing himself out of debt. He succeeded, but the effort cost him his life. Not suffering himself .to be interrupted even by the death of his beloved wife, in 1826, or by repeated attacks of ill health, he produced volume after volume — the conclusion of the Waverly series, the His- tory of Napoleon, and the Tales of a Grandfather — until he sank into the grave, an overworn but not a broken-hearted man. His funeral was unostentatious, but the procession was over a mile long, and all Scotland and England sent its mourners. No purely literary character was ever the recipient of greater spon- taneous honor, in life and in death, than Sir Walter Scott. In the year 1871, the centennial anniversary of his birth was celebrated with an outburst of enthusiasm which carried the present generation back to the days of Marmion and Waverly. 13* 150 ENGLISH LITERATURE. In estimating Scott's genius, we should be careful to distinguish be- tween the poet and the novelist. As a poet, Scott is only in the second class. He is far surpassed in imagination by Tennyson, Browning, and Longfellow; in power and breadth of conception, by Byron. His Murmion and Lady of the Lake are not great creations. Yet their diction is so spirited, their fundamental conceptions are so pure and cheerful, they suggest such a glamour of forest and mountain, lake and heather, that they will ever remain among the most delightful gems of the great English treasure-house. On the other hand, as a novelist, and a delineator of character, he is unsurpassed. It is the fashion, among writers of a certain class, to speak of Scott as superseded by Thackeray and Dickens. In a measure this is true ; every writer, no matter how great, is crowded out more or less by his successors. Not even Shakespeare, Dante, and Goethe have been exceptions to the rule. But it may well be pondered, whether, years from now, when the final muster-roll of English novelists is called, Scott's name will not head the list — whether Meg Merrilies, Jeannie Deans, Caleb Balderstone, Domine Sampson, Rebecca of York, Dirck Hatterick, Dandle Din- mont. Flora Mac Ivor, Rob Roy, Dugald Dalgetty, will not shine, like the older windows of the cathedral at Cologne in the evening twilight, clear and unfaded, while their younger and ambitious rivals, even Becky Sharpe, Major Pendennis, Ethel Newcome, Sam Weller, Mrs. Gamp, and Mr. Micawber, will appear by their side slightly dimmed and tarnished. Scott is nowhere so great as when he remains on his native heath. His Scottish novels are pre-eminently his best. His Tory prejudices and blindness of vision have passed away with the generation to which they were native, and there remain only his broad love of humanity, his cheery smile and quaint humor. To Scott belongs the honor of lifting the English novel from the dreary depths of the rakedom and sentimen- tality of the eighteenth century, and placing it upon the lasting foun- dations of good breeding, good morals, and good sense, from which no one henceforth can depart and be safe. Maria Edge^vorth. Maria Edgeworth, 1767-1849, holds a high rank as a writer of novels and tales, and of works on education. Miss Edgeworth was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Mr, Edgeworth was himself a man of letters, and an author of celebrity, particularly in works on education. Several of Maria's works were written in conjunction with her father. Those written by herself alone are chiefly Novels and SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 151 Tales. They are descriptive of domestic and social life, and are so shaped and constructed as to teach the doctrines of morals and educa- tion with as much clearness as if they had been treatises on those sub- jects, and with a good deal more efficiency than most treatises. For their truthfulness and vividness of description, and their skill in the delineation of character, they have received the highest encomiums from all classes of critics, and they have been perused with unabated delight by several generations of readers, both in England and America. Young and old alike delight in Miss Edge worth's Tales. Miss Austen. Jane Austen, 1775-1817, was the author of several novels of a high order of merit. Those best known are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility. Critics of the highest order speak of Miss Austen's novels in terms of strong commendation. Sir Walter Scott says, her portraits of society are far superior to anything of a like nature produced by writers of the other sex. Jane Porter. Miss Jane Porter, 1776-1850, was the author of many works, some of which have made her name famous. Two of these, Thaddeus of Warsaw, and Tlie Scottish Chiefs, are as widely known as any books of their class in the language. They are read by every school-boy and school-girl in the sentimental period of life, and call forth a peren- nial outburst of tears or enthusiasm. Neither work is distinguished for historical accuracy or profound insight into human nature. Yet the two are unique, and will be read and enjoyed by each successive generation of youth by reason of their sweet style and sentiment. Lady Blessington. Margaret, Countess of Blessington, 1787-1849, was celebrated in her day for her literary abilities and her personal charms, and her at- tractions in both respects were greatly increased by her high social position. Lady Blessington was the daughter of an Irish gentleman, Edmund Power. She was married, first, at the age of fifteen, to Cap- tain Farmer of the British army, and afterwards, at the age of thirty- one, to the Earl of Blessington. On his death. Lady Blessington, then at the age of forty-two, established herself in London, where for twenty years, from 1829 to 1849, her house was the centre both of fashion and of letters, for a large and brilliant circle. She was celebrated equally 152 ENGLISH LITERATURE. for her beauty and her wit ; and she wrote with the same ease and grace with which she talked. Lord Byron was a great admirer of her, and one of her most charming works is that in which she gives an account of her conversations with him. III. REVIEWERS AND POLITICAL WRITERS. Gifford. William Gifford, 1756-1826, obtained distinction in various walks of authorship, but is chiefly known by his labors as editor of the London Quarterly Review. Gifford' s first publication was the Baviad, a poetical satire, published in 1794, and directed against various second-class writers and pre- tenders to literature. His next was the Mseviad, 1795, likewise a satire, and aimed at the dramatists of the day. Both poems were suc- cessful. In 1802, he published a translation of Juvenal, which has been pronounced on good authority to be " the best poetical version of a classic in the English language." He performed a large amount of critical work in editing old English authors. He gave critical edi- tions of Massinger, 4 vols., 8vo. ; Ben Jonson, 9 vols., 8vo. ; Ford, 2 vols., 8vo. ; Shirley, 6 vols., Svo. Gifford's crowning work, however, was his editorship of the London Quarterly Review, from 1809, the time of its inception, to 1824. Here he reigned supreme for a period of fifteen years, and his reign was one of terror. He was a man of great acuteness of intellect, coarse and savage in disposition, lynx-eyed to detect blemishes, and relentless in exposing them, yet enjoying a large measure of consideration in the literary world on account of the power which he wielded by virtue of his editorial position, and which he used with incessant and remorse- less activity. Mackintosh. Sir James Mackintosh, 1765-1832, obtained great and deserved celebrity as a writer on subjects connected with statesmanship and national polity. He was a native of Scotland ; was educated at Aber- deen, and afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh ; abandoned the profession for the law ; held the posts of recorder and admiralty judge under the East India Company ; returned to England and was elected to Parliament ; afterwards occupied the chair of politics and history in the College at Haylebury. Mackintosh's principal works were a Dissertation on the Progress SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 153 of Ethical Philosophy, Lectures on the Law of Nature and of Nations, and a History of England (not finished). He wrote also a number of articles for the Edinburgh Eeview. Mackintosh seems to have been greater as a man- than as a writer. At least, no one of his works equals the wonderful reputation that he himself enjoyed among his contemporaries. The explanation is found in the fascinations of London society and the brilliant r61e played in it by Sir James. In a circle of wits and writers, he was the brightest light. His good-nature, his quickness, and his wonderful powers of memory invested him with a charm that fascinated everybody, and tempted him to lead a life of society which prevented him from achiev- ing any results commensurate with his abilities. Hazlitt. William Hazlitt, 1778-1830, wrote much on literary and political subjects. He contributed a number of articles to the Edinburgh Re- view, and wrote several lectures upon English Poetry, English Comic Writers, the Age of Elizabeth, etc. In Hazlitt's writings, merit is strangely jostled by demerit. He had a wide range of sympathy and appreciation, but was subject to blind prejudices. Especially was this defect manifest in his treatment of authors then living. He seemed incapable of appreciating a writer until he was dead. In the words of Professor Wilson, he reversed the proverb, and thought a dead ass better than a living lion. Canning. George Canning, 1770-1827, was a statesman and Parliamentary leader of great cekbrity. In conjunction with some others. Canning started a satirical journal, the Anti- Jacobin, which was intended to ridicule and discountenance the principles of the French Revolution. The poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was remarkable for the keenness of its wit. One of the pieces contributed by Canning, the Knife-Grinder, a burlesque upon Southey, has been greatly admired. Mr. Canning had a strong propensity for literary pursuits, and would doubtless have made a great figure in the world of letters, had not his talents been put in requisition in the more important science of governing a great empire. Cobbett. William Cobbett, 1762-1835, was an English political writer of great notoriety. He wrote under the name of Peter Porcupine, and exercised his vocation partly in the United States and partly in 154 ENGLISH LITERATURE. England. After a somewhat chequered career, Cobbett settled in Philadelphia in 1796, and started Peter Porcupine's Gazette, in which he entered with great bitterness and violence into the political ques- tions of the day. In 1800 he returned to England and began a similar course there. He came again to the United States in 1817, but went back finally to England in 1819, taking with him the bones of the infidel, Tom Paine. Cobbett did not mistake in naming himself "Porcupine." He bristled all over, and against everybody in turns, and was always in hot water. He was prosecuted and fined several times for slander, and once he was imprisoned. He was as untruthful as he was ill-natured. Apart from his moral delinquencies, Cobbett was a writer of great merit. His style is almost universally commended. He was a perfect master of that plain, homespun idiom which all understand, and he expressed himself with amazing clearness. He was especially remark- able for his rough common sense, and his powers of sarcasm. IV. PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ^A^RITERS. Dugald Ste^A^art. Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828, was the leading metaphysical writer in Great Britain during all the early part of the present century. He was born in Edinburgh, his father being at the time Professor of Mathe- matics in the University. In 1772, being then eighteen years old, young Stewart began assisting his father in the instruction of the mathematical classes at Edinburgh, and continued in that department, jointly with his father, until 1785. On the resignation of Ferguson, in 1785, Stewart was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy, and con- tinued to fill the chair for twenty-five years. His lectures were greatly admired, and added much to the renown of the University. In his philosophy, Stewart was a disciple of Keid, and followed up the reaction which Reid had begun, against the doctrines of Hume and Berkeley. Although not one of tlie most original or pro- found thinkers in his department, yet by the elegance of his style, his clearness of statement, and the great compass of his writings, he did more than any man in his day to diffuse an interest in speculations connected with the human mind. His principal works are : Elements of the Philosophy of the Hu- man Mind ; Outlines of Moral Philosophy ; The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers ; Lectures on Political Economy ; A Gen- eral View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy, since the lievival of Letters. SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 155 Thomas 'Brown. Thomas Brown, M. D., 1778-1820, a distinguished Scotch meta- physician, was the colleague and successor of Dugald Stewart in the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. The work which first gave him a world-wide celebrity was a treatise on Cause and Effect. The theory of causation which he introduced, though since generally abandoned as untenable, was presented with such clearness of statement and such wonderful vigor and beauty of style, that it took the public by storm. Critics of all schools were loud in its praise. Abereromble. John Abereromble, M. D., 1781-1844, who was at his death at the head of his profession in Scotland as a physician, was equally emi- nent as a writer of medical works, and as a writer on metaphysics. His works of the latter class are the Philosophy of the Moral Feel- ings, and the Intellectual Powers. The work last named has had an extended and general popularity. Though not profound, it is clear and easily understood ; it contains much curious and useful informa- tion, and it is particularly valuable on those points in which the mind is affected by the body. The author's medical experience and knowledge gave him special facilities for treating intelligently this class of subjects. A truly Christian spirit pervades all his writings. Dymond. Jonathan Dymond, 1796-1828, a member of the Society of Friends, wrote two works of great value : Inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity; Essays on the Principles of - Morality, and on the Private and Political Eights and Obligations of Mankind. The former was one of the most effective weapons of the Peace Society. The latter has been republished in the United States, and has been made a text-book on Moral Science in many institutions of learning. Jeremy Bentham. Jeremy Bentham, 1747-1832, attained great celebrity as a writer on political reform. Most of the ameliorations in English law have sprung from the discussions to which Bentham gave rise. He was indeed a bold, vigorous, and original thinker, but not a safe guide ; and in liis religious opinions was decidedly of an infidel character. The cardinal doctrines of his whole system were, that " utility is the 156 ENGLISH LITERATURE. test and measure of virtue ; " and that " the object of legislation is the greatest happiness of the greatest number." Malthus. Thomas Eobert Malthus, 1766-1834, was the author of a large number of works on Political Economy. His best known work was an Essay on the Principle of Population. It excited great attention when it first appeared ; and the principles which it lays down have not ceased to engage the attention of philosophers ever since. He controverts the theory of Godwin and others upon the progress and perfectibility of human nature, and endeavors to establish, as a funda- mental principle, that population tends to increase in geometrical ratio, while the supply of food and other necessaries can be increased only in arithmetical. The corollary is, of course, that at some future day the supply of food will not suffice the population. This theory has lately received fresh impulse by its relation to the so-called strug- gle for existence underlying Darwin's Origin of Species. Ricardo. David Ricardo, 1772-1823, is another prominent writer on Politi- cal Economy. Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Tax- ation belongs to the same class with Adam Smith's Wealth of Na- tions, Malthus on Population, and Mill's Principles, leading works on the subject. Several of tlie principles laid down by Ricardo have been controverted or shown to be erroneous, but the work still retains its value as an able treatise. V. RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. Scott the Commentator. Thomas Scott, D. D., 1747-1821, was the author of a Commentary on the Bible which has been more read than any other like work in the English language. His first work was the Force of Truth, in which he describes his own religious experience. During the course of his long ministry, he wrote many other books and pamphlets on religious and theological subjects. But the main work of his life was the preparation of his Commentary on the Bible, which first appeared in 1792. It was usually printed in 6 vols., 4to. This great work was entirely his own composition, and was characterized by a sound sense and a general sobriety of judgment and clearness of statement which SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORAEIES. 157 made it an almost universal favoriter No Commentary on the Scrip- tures probably has ever been read half so much as Scott's. It is wanting in critical scholarship, and it skips the hard places, but it gives a clear, bold outline of the general scope of each passage. It is now practically superseded by works of a more critical character. Robert Hall. Kobert Hall, 1764-1831, was, by unanimous consent, the greatest pulpit orator of his day, excepting possibly Dr. Chalmers. The accounts given of the effects of Eobert Hall's preaching partake of the marvellous. " From the commencement of his discourse an almost breathless silence prevailed, deeply impressive and solemniz- ing from its singular intenseness. Not a sound was heard but that of the preacher's voice — scarcely an eye but was fixed upon him — not a countenance that he did not watch and read, and interpret as he sur- veyed them again and again with his rapid, ever-excursive glance. As he advanced and increased in animation, five or six of his auditors would be seen to rise and lean forward over the front of their pews, still keeping their eyes upon him. Some new or striking sentiment or expression would, in a few minutes, cause others to rise in like manner : shortly afterwards still more, and so on, until, long before the close of the sermon, it often happened that a considerable portion of the congregation were seen standing, — every eye directed to the preacher, yet now and then for a moment glancing from one to the other, thus transmitting and reciprocating thought and feeling : Mr. Hall himself, though manifestly absorbed in his subject, conscious of the whole, received new animation from what he thus witnessed, re- flecting it back upon those who were already alive to the inspiration, until all who were susceptible of thought and emotion seemed wound up to the utmost limit of elevation on earth, — when he would close, and they reluctantly resumed their seats." — Olinthus Gregory. Dr. Hall was strongly moved by public affairs, and on several occa- sions he wrote and preached on the exciting topics of the day. The course of the French Kevolution called forth several controversial essays from his pen, and his sermon on the death of the Princess Char- lotte attracted universal attention by its commanding eloquence. f,i Legh Richmond. Legh Eichmond, 1772-1827, a clergyman of the Church of England, of the evangelical school, acquired great celebrity by the publication of three narrative tracts, the Dairyman's Daughter, the Negro Ser- 14 158 ENGLISH LITERATURE. vant, and the Young Cottager, which have had an immense circula- tion. Of the Dairyman's Daughter alone, four million copies, in nineteen languages, had been sold as long ago as 1849. VI. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. Mrs. Barbauld. Mrs. Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743-1825, though not gifted with genius of so high an order as Joanna Baillie, was yet a woman of noble mould, who deserves well of her kind both for what she did and for what she was. Iler writings, which are numerous, are partly edu- cational and partly belong to what is called polite literature. Mrs. Bar- bauld was the daughter of the Eev. John Aikin, and the sister of Dr. John Aikin. Her father, who was a dissenting minister, and who kept a seminary for the education of boys, gave her the same lessons with his other pupils, and thus she was thoroughly instructed in the Greek and Latin classics. She was married to the Eev. Rochemant Barbauld, a Dissenting minister of French descent. She and her husband opened a boarding-school for boys, the success of which was due mainly to her exertions. Several young boys were taken under her entire charge. Among these lads were two who afterwards became distinguished, Sir William Gell and Lord Chief-Justice Denman. It was for these young pupils that Mrs. Barbauld composed her two best works, Early Lessons for Children, and Hymns in Prose. Among her other works, she edited the British Novelists, in 50 vols. Mrs. Barbauld lived to the age of eighty-two, and her closing years, like those of many other women eminent in literature, were peaceful and serene. The lines given below were written by Mrs. Barbauld in her ex- treme old age. They have a curious history. Crabb Robinson says that on one occasion he repeated the lines to Wordsworth, while on a visit to the poet. Wordsworth, who was walking up and down in his sitting-room, asked to have them repeated again and again, until he had learned them by heart. Then, pausing in his walk, and mutter- ing to himself, he said, " I am not in the habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish I had written those lines." " Life ! I know not what thou art. But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me 's a secret yet. Life ! we 've been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPOR AEIES. 159 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear — Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; Then, steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time ; Say not Good-Night, — but in some brighter clime Bid me Good-Morning." Dr. Aikin. John Aikin, M.D., 1747-1822, an industrious and useful writer, was for fifty years prominently before the public as an author and a compiler, but without achieving any lasting renown. In conjunction with his sister, Mrs. Barbauld, he wrote Evenings at Home, a series of essays and tales for children. The work was completed in 1795, in 6 vols., and was very popular. It was translated into almost every language of Europe, and led the way to numerous works of a similar nature by other hands. It was the pioneer to an important species of literature which in our day has received a prodigious development. His latest publication was an edition of the Select Works of the British Poets, with copious notes, biographical and critical. The work is familiarly known as Aikin's British Poets, and has enjoyed an exten- sive popularity. Charles Lamb. Charles Lamb, 1775-1834, excelled all the men of his day in the style of writing which he cliiefly cultivated. The Essays of Elia, by which he is best known, are marked by a certain delicate and quiet humor, which will always insure him a chosen band of devoted ad- Roscoe. William Eoscoe, 1753-1831, is well known as a writer on Italian history and literature. He was a banker of Liverpool, and a member of Parliament. His chief works were his Life of Lorenzo de Medici, and his Life of Leo X. They were for a long time the standard works on the subject of which they treat. The style is in the main pleasing, and the author's knowledge is extensive. Unfortunately, however, he was not critical or accurate in his use of authorities, and he has even consciously veiled some of the worst features of that age in Italy. For much of the ground which he covers he has been superseded by latei' writers, especially by TroUope in his History of the Florentine Ke- public. 160 ENGLISH LITERATURE, Mitford. William Mitford, 1744-1827, is honorably connected with literature by his elaborate work on the History of Greece. This extends from the beginning of Greek history down to the death of Philip. It was the standard history, until superseded by the works of Thirl wall and Grote, and even now possesses great value. Its chief defect is that it is conceived in a partisan, not a judicial spirit. Mitford writes, throughout, with the animus of a Tory, and carries back to the days of Greece his antipathies to democracy and republics. He sees the events of Athenian political life through Tory spectacles, as it were, and hence can see but little good in Demosthenes, and no evil in PhiUp. Gillies. John Gillies, LL. D., 1747-1836, is likewise extensively known as an historian of Greece. Gillies's Greece and Mitford's were at one time the rival candidates for public favor, though both have now been superseded. CHAPTER XIII. Wordsworth and his Contemporaries. (I830-I8B0.) The present chapter embraces the time from 1830 to 1850. It in- cludes the long period of tranquillity that ensued after the accession of Louis Philippe to the throne of France. It was a time of general peace and thrift throughout the world. The writers of this period may be divided into six sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Wordsworth ; 2. Writers of Novels and Tales, beginning with Miss Mitford ; 3. Writers on Litemture, Politics, and Science, beginning with Sydney Smith ; 4. Writers on Religion and Theology, beginning with Chalmers ; 5. Writers on History, Biogra- phy, Antiquities, and Travel, beginning with Lingard; 6. Miscella- neous Writers, beginning with Arnold of Rugby. I. THE POETS. Wordsworth. William Wordsworth, 1770=-1850, had been contemporary with Coleridge and Southey and the other illustrious writers mentioned in the preceding chapter, and had risen to fame with them. But he con- tinued steadily to rise after those stars had set, and during all the lat- ter part of his course he reigned supreme in the poetical firmament, in solitary and unapproachable splendor. From 1840 to 1850 he was by general consent the first of living poets in England, Wordsworth studied at Cambridge, where he took his degree of B. A. in 1791. Before graduation, however, he had visited France, then in the throes of the great Revolution, and had become intimately ac- 14* ^ L 161 162 ENGLISH LITERATURE. quainted with some of the Girondists. The impression made upon the young poet by the scenes and characters of the Eevolution was never to be effaced. He became for the time an ardent republican, so much so that he could not even sympathize with his country in her war upon France. In time came tlie reaction, brought about by the crimes and anarchy of the Eevolution itself, and Wordsworth turned back in righteous horror. From this time onward, the poet's life became one of tranquil meditation and composition. His first publication of any note was one made jointly by him and Coleridge. This was the famous Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798. The understanding was that Coleridge should "take up the super- natural and romantic," while Wordsworth undertook to "give the charm of novelty to the things of every day, and to excite a feeling . analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and by directing to the loveliness and the wonders of the world around us." Accordingly, Coleridge produced the Ancient Mariner, and Wordsworth a number of short pieces, among them some of his very best, such as an Anecdote for Fathers, We are Seven, Lines written in Early Spring, Tintern Abbey. Others again, like the Idiot Boy, are unquestionably weak. Not only did the vol- ume meet with no favor ; it was condemned in unmeasured terms by critics of high and low degree. Coleridge came off more lightly, but Wordsworth's share of the venture was denounced as the veriest "trash" and "twaddle." But Wordsworth was a law unto himself. Apparently unruffled by severity and ridicule, he moved on in his selt-appointed way. His circumstances grew easier by the payment of a long-standing debt owed to his father's estate. He married, in 1802, his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, by whom he had five children. After living for some years at Grasmere, and then at Allan Bank, he settled permanently, in 1813, at Eydal Mount, in Cumberland; and there calmly awaited the slow-coming verdict of the public. The records of literature present scarcely another such instance of a poet's growing into supreme favor and repute in despite of deter- mined opposition. At first Wordsworth had only the admiration of a few appreciative friends — Coleridge, De Quincey, Southey — and the almost adoration of his wife and sister. But slowly, year after year, prejudice was disarmed, ridicule was silenced, the circle of ad- mirers grew larger, the popular understanding of the poet's genius was quickened. At his death, Wordsworth was not only the official poet-laureate, but the acknowledged monarch of English letters. Wordsworth himself contributed nothing beyond his works towards WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 163 bringing about this wonderful revolution in popular opinion. No poet probably ever went less out of his way to seek favor or notice, cared less for the thoughts and opinions of contemporaries, read less either for information or pleasure. What he gave to the world was elicited by close communion with nature in her myriad shapes and hues, or evolved little by little from the slow- working loom of his own imagi- nation and meditation. His principal works are Lyrical Ballads; The Excursion; The White Doe of Eylstone ; Peter Bell ; The Kiver Duddon ; Yarrow Revisited; and Sonnets. Wordsworth is pre-eminently the poet of the reflective imagination. He has not the passion of Byron or of Tennyson, or the myriad mind of Shakespeare. He has not the vigor of Milton, but he stands next to Milton in purity, sweetness, gravity of thought and style, and broad humanity. His demerit — the one that aroused at first such a storm of hostile criticism — is that he often takes the fatal step from the sublime, or at least from the imaginative, to the ridiculous. He seems at times to be wanting in the sense of the incongruous, and he is always wanting in true passion. While able to depict passionate characters, he fails to detect the subtle connection between motive and action, character and life. With all his defects, however, he is a great poet. He has ennobled the poetic style, and given to it philosophic depth : he has awakened a love for the lowly both in nature and in man ; he has given a healthier tone to popular sentiment. No two men ever differed more widely in personal character than Wordsworth and Dickens, — the one serene, contemplative ; the other bustling, eager, ostentatious. Yet the poet's exaltation of the lowly prepared the public for the folk-sketches of the great novelist. Keble. John Keble, 1792-1866, gained his chief distinction as a writer of sacred lyrics, though honored also for his theological writings, and held in the highest reverence for the singular sweetness of his disposi- tion and the purity of his life. Keble was educated at Oxford, and was for a time Professor of Poetry there, but spent most of his life in a country parish. His name is intimately associated with that of Newman and Pnsey in the so- called Tractarian movement, which caused such excitement in England thirty or forty years ago. According to Newman's statement, Keble was the originator and master-mind of the movement. 164 ENGLISH LITERATURE. His best known works are : The Christian Year, or Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holidays throughout the year; Lyra Inno- centium, or Thoughts in Verse on Children, and his contributions to Tracts for the Times. Keble appears to have been a man of uncommon talents, and of the most winning disposition. While at Oxford, he was the idol of the University. His subsequent life was mainly one of retirement and parochial duty. His Christian Year is the most valuable contribution to religious poetry made in the present century, and has been received as a household treasure in families of every creed. Croly. George Croly, LL.D., 1780-1860, was a clergyman of the Church of England, and had a parish in London, where he attained celebrity as a preacher. His writings are very numerous, and hold a high rank. He succeeded about equally as a poet, as a writer of fiction, as an his- torian, as a literary editor, and as a religious polemic. In the long list of his works, there is scarcely one that at the time of its publication did not make its mark. His Catiline, in poetry, his Salathiel, in fic- tion, his George IV. and Edmund Burke, in history, fall but little short of being of the first class in their several kinds. V Ebenezer Elliott. Ebenezer Elliott, 1781-1849, is familiarly known as " The Corn-Law Rhymer." Elliott was obliged in his youth to work at the forge in an iron foundry in Yorkshire, and had few advantages of education. But an inward prompting led him to the cultivation of letters by means of private study, and in his case, as in that of several others in like cir- cumstances, the inspiration to verse first came from reading Thomson's Seasons. His first ventures with the public were unsuccessful, being on topics similar to those which he had admired in Thomson. But Elliott was out of his element in subjects like these. Neither his education nor his rilgged nature fitted him for gentle themes. The agitation for the repeal of the corn laws, and the light thrown upon the appalling hard- ships of the operatives, enlisted, however, his warmest sympathies, and furnished him with topics which called out all the resources of his strong and fiery nature. His Corn-Law Rhymes had the ring of the anvil. They received almost immediate recognition, and gave the author an established position as the Poet of the People. WOKDSWOKTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 165 Barham. Eev. Eicliard Harris Barham, 1788-1845, a humorous writer, is bet- ter known by his assumed name of Thomas Ingoldsby. His chief work, the Ingoldsby Legends, a series of tale^ in verse and prose, ap- peared first in Bentley's Miscellany, and was received with general favor. None of these Legends probably had a wider circulation than the thoroughly laughable story of the famous Lord Tomnoddy. Mr. Barham was a friend of Sydney Smith, Theodore Hook, and other wits of the day. Hood. Thomas Hood, 1798-1845, was the prince of comic humorists, the most audacious and successful of punsters. Hood was son of a London publisher, and entered a counting-house to learn the mercantile busi- ness, but left it for the engraver's tool, and that in turn for the life of a man of letters. He became sub-editor of the London Magazine, and editor of the New Monthly, besides being a regular contributor to Punch. His most successful humorous publications were Miiss Killmansegg and Her Wooden Leg, Whims and Oddities, the Comic Annual, and Hood's Comic Album. The three most famous of his serious poems are the Dream of Eugene Aram, the Song of the Shirt, and the Bridge of Sighs. The two latter, apart from their beauty of* sentiment, are probably unsurpassed in English verse in the wonderfully delicate interlacing of their rhymes. No English writer has equalled Hood in the audacity with which he plays upon words. Still, even in his most fantastic pieces, there is always a deep undercurrent of genuine pathos. Hook. Theodore Edward Hook, 1788-1841, another humorist and wit of this period, was second only to Hood. Hook wrote, in all, thirty-eight works and pieces, besides editing the John Bull and the New Monthly, and contributing to other periodicals. " Many and multi- farious, however, as are his volumes, he has left behind him no great creation, nothing that can be pointed to as a triumphant index of the extraordinary powers which he undoubtedly possessed." — D. M. Moir. 166 ENGLISH LITERATURE. James Montgomery. James Montgomery, 1771-1854, holds a high rank among the poets of England. His devotional poetry especially has made a deep im- pression on the national heart, hardly inferior to that produced by the poetry of Cowper. He was for more than thirty years editor of the Sheffield Iris, a liberal journal. The last twenty years of his life were passed in retirement. Montgomery is one among the instances in which Jeffrey made shipwreck in attempting to criticise poetical productions. The slash- ing reviewer broke the staff over Montgomery's Wanderer in Switzer- land, but all in vain. Despite the maledictions and prognostications of the Edinburgh, Montgomery's poems gained steadily in favor, until the poet obtained his just rank by the side of Campbell, Rogers, and Southey. Of his larger works the most important are the following; The Wanderer in Switzerland ; The West Indies, a poem against the slave- trade ; The World before the Flood. Besides these, he wrote a large number of short devotional pieces that have been adopted into the hymnals of all Christian denominations. Many lines and passages, such as " There is a land, of every land the pride," have passed into the common stock of the language. Robert Montgomery. Robert Montgomery, 1807-1856, is the author of a large number of works, chiefly poetical, on religious subjects. He enjoyed great tem- porary popularity as a poet, but is at present little read. His princi- pal works, the Omnipresence of the Deity, and Satan, or Intellect without God, were the subjects of a scathing notice by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review. Bernard Barton. Bernard Barton, 1784-1849, is commonly known as "The Quaker Poet." He became a banker's clerk at the age of twenty-six, and continued in that position to the end of his life. He published no one extended poem, but a large number of detached pieces, mostly of a meditative character. Thomas Haynes Bayly. Thomas Haynes Bayly, 1797-1839, is widely known as a prolific writer of novels, tales, plays, and songs. He produced thirty-six pieces for the stage, and his songs are numbered by the hundred. WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 167 II. WRITERS OF NOVELS AND TALES. Miss Mitford. Mary Eussell Mitford, 1786-1855, is among tlie best writers of tales descriptive of English country life and character. She evinced early in life a fondness for letters. Poetry was her favorite, but she was forced to turn aside to the every-day but more lucrative path of prose. Her first important publication was Our Village, a series of delight- ful sketches of English rural life. It met with a very warm reception, and established the author's reputation. This was followed by Ameri- can Tales ; American Tales for Children ; Belford Regis, or Sketches of a Country Town ; Country Stories ; and Atherton, a tale of Country Life. Upon the whole. Miss Mitford succeeds best as a describer of English country life and character. Her sketches are drawn from nature itself, and have an air of the most charming reality. No books of the kind are more thoroughly enjoyable by old and young. They have outlived nearly all the fashionable novels, their great contempo- raries, and entered into the permanent treasure-house of English lit- erature. Mrs. Opie. Amelia Opie, 1769-1853, is widely known — almost as widely as Miss Edgeworth — for her popular Tales. ' She was the wife of the distinguished painter, James Opie. Her principal works are Father and Daughter, Adeline Mowbray, and Madeline. She wrote also a collection of shorter pieces, and a series of stories to illustrate the evil consequences of lying. Mrs. Opie's fame as a novelist has diminished considerably of late years. In no sense can she be considered a creator of character. Her personages are not marked, the plot of the story is weak, and the moral purpose throughout is too palpable. Her strength lies in her power to dissect morbid conditions and passions of the human heart. Lady Morgan. Lady Sydney Morgan, 1789-1859, was in her day one of the leading celebrities of the literary world. She was chiefly known by her novels and her works of travel. The most popular of her novels is the Wild Irish Girl. Woman, or Ida of Athens, is noted as having furnished the occasion for one of GifFord's most ferocious reviews in the London Quarterly. Her two most celebrated works of travel are entitled re- spectively France and Italy. They are still interesting, and were read 168 ENGLISH LITERATURE. with avidity at the time of their appearance, although Gifford kept up his fulminations against the authoress. Lady Morgan's style is sprightly, and her descriptions successful, but she was wholly incom- petent to deal with the graver problems of life, such as she has touched upon in Woman. Captain Marryat. Frederick Marryat, 1792-1848, captain in the Royal Navy, and an able officer as well as writer, is universally considered the best English delineator of naval life and adventure. His principal works are The Pacha of Many Tales ; Midshipman Easy ; Japliet in Search of a Father ; Peter Simple ; Jacob Faithful. , Besides his strictly nautical novels. Captain Marryat wrote several novels and sketches descriptive of American life in the West. During the latter part of his life Marryat published a number of stories for the young, such as Masterman Ready. As a writer upon American manners, he attained but moderate success. It is only when he moves among scenes and persons thoroughly English that he displays his powers to the best advantage. His descriptions of incident and character are easy and vigorous, and extremely droll. The best of his works is Midshipman Easy. George Borrow. George Borrow, 1803 , is a popular English writer and adven- turer. He had^ natural turn for acquiring by the ear a knowledge of living languages, and had in this way acquired, among other lan- guages, a knowledge of that spoken by the Gypsies, and with it a great deal of curious information in regard to that singular people. He seems to have been a sort of Gypsy himself, so far as an irrepres- sible love of wandering and adventure is concerned; and he was employed, with wonderful success, in circulating the Bible in Spain at a time when no other agency seemed capable of doing the work. His works, partly fictitious, and partly autobiographical, giving an account of his labors in Bible distribution and of his adventures among the Gypsies, are exceedingly entertaining, and have been very popular. The titles of his principal works are: The Bible in Spain ; Zincali, an Account of the Gypsies in Spain ; Lavengro, the Scholar, the Gypsy, and the Priest. Charlotte Bronte and her Sisters. Three sisters, daughters of Rev. Patrick Bronte, rose suddenly to fame about the middle of the present century : Charlotte, 1816- 15 WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 169 1855, known as " Currer Bell ; " Anne, 1820-1849, known as " Acton Bell;" and Emily, 1819-1848, known as "Ellis Bell." The first publication of the sisters was a joint afiair. Poems by Cur- rer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Emily, besides her share in the volume just named, wrote Wuthering Heights, a novel of considerable, but very unequal power. Anne wrote also Agnes Grey, and The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall. None of these works, probably, would have at- tracted much attention, but for their association with those of the .older sister. Charlotte's first separate publication was Jane Eyre, an Autobiog- raphy. It was a work of wonderful power, and it gained immediate and universal popularity. It was followed by Shirley, not quite equal to the preceding, but still very able and very popular. Vil- lette, her last and greatest work, was received with a universal burst of admiration. In it she not only rose to the level of Jane Eyre, but even went above it. The biography of Charlotte Bronte by Mrs. Gaskell is itself a book of intense interest. III. WRITERS ON LITERATURE, POLITICS, AND SCIENCE. Sydney Smith. Sydney Smith, 1771-1845, the witty Canon of St. Paul's, was on the whole the ablest and most efiective of that small band of writers who in the early part of this century made the Edinburgh Review a power in the world. Smith studied at Winchester and at Oxford, took orders in the Church of England, and became finally Canon of St. Paul's. He was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, and he wrote for that periodical many of its most brilliant articles on politics, literature, and philosophy. His most celebrated series of writings was Let- ters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my Brother Abraham who lives in the Country. These Letters, appearing during the times of agitation which preceded the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, exhibited the author's full powers of wit, sarcasm, and solid rea- soning, and summed up the case for Emancipation so ably as to leave nothing to be said on the other side. Plis Memoirs, published by his daughter. Lady Holland, is a most interesting biography, revealing to us both the public and the domestic life of one of the shrewdest and most admirable of writers, husbands, and fathers. A collection of his sayings has been made, under the title of Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith. *15 170 ENGLISH LITERATURE. Smith's wit was of the highest order, the wit which results from a keen, intuitive perception of right and wrong, not degenerating into bitterness and rancor, but poised by strong good sense and healthy self-activity. He differs from Lamb in having less humor, and a less delicate play of fancy. Lamb's whimsicalities are those of a recluse who lives to himself and his books, and loiters through the world with half-closed eyes ; Smith walks briskly through the great Vanity Fair with eyes wide open and a jest at his tongue's end for every folly. Many of Smith's sayings and repartees have become pro- verbial, such as the one in which he characterizes Macaulay's con- versation as enlivened by brilliant flashes of silence. Jeffrey. Francis, Lord Jeffrey, 1773-1850, made for himself a world-wide celebrity as a leading writer for the Edinburgh Review, of which also, for more than a fourth of a century, he was the fearless and unequalled editor. Jeffrey, while a young man in Edinburgh, became intimate with Brougham and Sydney Smith, and the result of this intimacy was the establishment of the celebrated Review. After the publication of the first three numbers, the editorship was transferred from Smith to Jeffrey, who retained it from 1803 to 1829. Jeffrey's contributions number in all two hundred. A selection, seventy-nine in number, has been pub- lished, in 4 vols., 8vo ; the remaining articles still lie scattered through- out the numbers of the Review. Jeffrey occupies undoubtedly the most prominent position among modern English reviewers. This prominence is due, however, fully as much to his success in editorship as to his own merits as a critic. Under his management the Edinburgh Review became a great lit- erary and political power in the realm. Men of every rank and pro- fession read and admired, dreaded or hated, its slashing tone and its recklessness of fear or favor. Much, very much, of the political pro- gress of England during the present century is due to the stimulus applied unsparingly to the body politic by the writers for this Review. Brougham. Henry, Lord Brougham, 1778-1868, was one of the great lights of the nineteenth century. He was an advocate, a jurist, a statesman, a political reformer, and a man of letters, and in each of these walks of mental activity stood among the foremost. As a lawyer, Brougham soon rose to distinction ; and being employed WOEDSWOKTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 171 as counsel for the defence of Queen Caroline, he had an occasion for the display of his talents such as has rarely happened. He was for many years a member of the House of Commons, where he had no superior in debate, and no equal except perhaps Canning. He was at length elevated to the Peerage and made Lord Chancellor. As Chan- cellor, he displayed amazing activity, and on retiring from the office he left not a single case in arrear of judgment, — a fact without prece- dent in the history of that court. He was through life an earnest ad- vocate of popular education, cheap publications, and of political and social reform. Of all his labors, none produced a more immediate and widespread inj9.uence than those connected with the Edinburgh Review. To this celebrated journal, begun in 1802, Brougham continued for twenty-five years to be a regular contributor. The Review exerted a powerful in- fluence wherever the English language was spoken, and on almost every topic of public interest; and Brougham, Smith, and Jeffrey were for many years the great triumvirs who wielded, without dispute, the mighty sceptre. A complete edition of Brougham's works was published under his own supervision, in 1857, in 10 vols., 8vo. Since his death, his auto- biography, written when he was almost ninety, has made its appearance ; Life and Times of Lord Brougham, written by himself, 3 vols. Wilson. • John Wilson, 1785-1854, better known as Christopher North, did for Blackwood's Magazine what Brougham, Jeffrey, and Smith did for the Edinburgh Review. He was equally, though somewhat later, and in a different way, a potentate in the world of opinion. Blackwood's Magazine began in 1817, with Wilson and Lockhart as its chief contributors. Lockhart going soon after to London, Wilson became thenceforth sole editor as well as chief writer. In 1820, he was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, his competitor being Sir William Hamilton, then but little known. Wilson succeeded in sustaining both his editorship and his professor- ship with great distinction. His genius shone brightest when writing those genial, hap-hazard, yet eminently suggestive sketches, criticisms, and fragments that filled page after page of Blackwood, and kept the reader laughing or frowning, but always awake. There was a spon- taneity, a freshness, about North's utterances, a freedom from conven- tionality, that surprised and delighted. The popular heart has always associated him with Burns and Scott, as one of a great literary trio. 172 ENGLISH LITERATURE. To the Scotch mind, the massive form, shaggy brows, rollicking manner, shrewd bonhomie, independent speech of the great Kit North, are typical of national character. He is a man whom his countrymen thoroughly understand, and with whom they can sympathize. The most famous of his magazine pieces was a series known as the Noctes Ambrosianae. Of his publications outside the magazine the one best known was Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. De Quincey. Thomas De Quincey, 1785-1859, is familiarly known as the English Opium Eater. Although in the main he made shipwreck of his won- derful powers, he yet achieved much that was great and noble. He is by common consent one of the greatest masters of English prose. After leaving the University, when about the age of twenty-four, he became intimate with Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, and took up his abode among them at Grasmere, in the beautiful Lake region made famous by the residence of these great writers. He remained in that place about twenty years, devoting his time to literary pursuits, and publishing his writings through the magazines, — Blackwood, Tait, and others. On leaving Grasmere, he went to Glasgow, and thence to Edinburgh, in which latter city he spent the last years of his life. After indulging in the excessive use of opium for many years, De Quincey, by a desperate and long-continued effort, succeeded in over- coming the habit, though he never recovered entirely from the terri- ble effects. This was in 1820, when he was thirty-five years of age. In the following year he made a great sensation by the publication of the Confessions of an English Opium Eater, giving an account of his previous life and, of his experience under the influence of the dreadful drug. De Quincey was a man of extraordinary powers, and had they been under proper regulation, he might have achieved works which would have placed him among the great men of all time. As it is, his works are all of the nature of fragments, great and splendid, beyond the reach of any man of his time to equal, yet, after all, fragments. Of the excellence of his style, as a writer of prose, it is difficult to speak too highly. Not a few critics of great authority place him, in that respect, at the head of all English prose writers, while others divide the honor between him and Ruskin. He wrote on a great variety of subjects, historical, literary, speculative, imaginative; and on every subject that he undertook he left the evidences of great and original genius. WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 173 Loekhart. John Gibson Lockhart, 1794-1854, occupies a large and honorable place in the literary history of his times. He was one of the early contributors to Blackwood's Magazine, and from 1826 to 1853 was editor of the London Quarterly Keview. In his position as editor, he placed the Quarterly in the very first rank of periodicals. His greatest separate work is his Memoirs of Sir Walter Scott, which, as a biography, ranks next to Boswell's Life of Johnson. Lockliart was a native of Scotland. He was educated at Glasgow and Oxford, and married the eldest daughter of Sir Walter Scott. Landor. Walter Savage Landor, 1775-1864, is one of the connecting links between the age of Waiter Scott, Byron, and Southey, and that of Tennyson and Dickens. He began writing while still a boy, and he did not cease entirely until extreme old age, though he lived to be almost ninety. He was remarkable for the accuracy of his scholar- ship in Latin and Greek, and for his knowledge of history, and espe- cially of the history of Greece and Rome. The men and the affairs of former ages seemed to be as familiar to his mind, in all the minutiae of their every-day and private life, as are those of our own personal ac- quaintance. This thoroughness of historical knowledge, joined to a vigorous imagination, enabled him to execute in so wonderful a manner those Imaginary Conversations, which form the enduring basis of his fame. In these Conversations, after the manner of Plato and Cicero, he introduces well-known historical characters, as discussing various questions of public and private interest. The range of subjects dis- cussed in these dialogues is almost encyclopaedic in character, and the proprieties of time and person are so nicely observed that the reader almost unconsciously becomes acquainted with the men as well as with the subjects. In this class of his works are to be included Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans ; Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen ; Pericles and Aspasia ; and Citation and Examination of Shakespeare for Deer-Stealing. Mr. Landor was a man of wealth, extremely fastidious in his tastes, proud even to arrogance, careless, almost contemptuous, of public opinion, and not condescending to conceal the good opinion he had of himself. He was of course unpopular, and was subjected to savage criticism. Yet, as years rolled on, his eminent merits gradually ob- 15* 174 ENGLISH LITEEATURE. tained recognition ; and, unlike many of his contemporaries, his star now stands confessedly higher in the firmament than it did fifty years ago. His writings are very unequal, and some of them doubtless de- serve the condemnation which they received. But others are truly classical, and may claim to stand beside the famous works of antiquity which they most resemble in form and structure. John Foster. John Foster, 1770-1843, was the son of a weaver, and was himself apprenticed to a trade ; but discovering aptitudes for higher occupa- tions, he was allowed to study for the ministry, and entered the Bap- tist College at Bristol. Being obliged by a glandulous afiection of the neck to stop preaching, he gave himself up to literary work, writing chiefly for the Eclectic Keview. His contributions to this Keview rank with those of Macaulay, Jeffrey, and Mackintosh in the Edin- burgh, for vigor, originality, depth, and finish. He wrote also a series of Essays, which are known wherever the English language is spoken. Hallam. Henry Hallam, LL. D., 1778-1859, was one of the most distin- guished historical writers of the century. His chief writings are : A View of Europe during the Middle Ages ; Constitutional History of England ; Literature of Europe in 15-17th centuries. Hallam was a valued friend of Sir Walter Scott, and one of the early contributors to the Edinburgh Review. Hugh Miller. Hugh Miller, 1802-1856, a native of Scotland, was a man of the most marked character and talents. In early life he was employed as a day-laborer in a stone-quarry, where he not only worked out sand- stone for his employers, but the geology of the old sandstone for him- self, and laid the deep and broad foundations for his subsequent fame. His principal contributions, in book-form, to science are: The Old Red Sandstone; Footpi^ints of the Creator; Testimony of the Rocks. His style is a model of clearness and vigor, and of adaptation to the mind of the non-professional reader. No one has done more to render the science of geology popular in a legitimate way. The Testimony of the Rocks is a masterly attempt to reconcile Geology with Genesis, or rather to show that the science of the earth's formation is no more antagonistic to Revelation than is astronomy, that the two are co-ordi- nate and not antagonistic. WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 175 IV. WRITERS ON RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. Chalmers. Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., 1780-1847, was the most eminent Scotch divine of his day, and one of the great men of all time. Chalmers first became celebrated as a preacher in the Tron Church, Glasgow, where his pulpit discourses attracted great attention. His abilities as a writer of the first order became conspicuous by the essay on Christianity, which he prepared for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. He next appeared as a great and original thinker on the difficult ques- tions of political economy, particularly those connected with pauper- ism, and his writings on this subject are alone a noble monument of his genius. He was appointed to tlie chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrew's, and afterwards to that of Theology in the University of Edinburgh. He became the active and acknowledged leader of the Free Church party in the disruption movement, and when the crisis came, he resigned his professorship. He was made Professor of Theology in the Theological School founded by the Free Church, and he continued to the end of his days to devote his great talents to the work of organizing and consolidating its affairs. His pre-eminent abilities obtained recognition in his receiving the degree of LL.D. from the University of Oxford, and in being elected a cor- responding member of the Eoyal Institute of France, " honors never before accorded to a Presbyterian divine, and seldom to a Scotchman." Chalmers's works, including those published posthumously, and the four volumes of Memoirs by his son-in-law. Dr. Hanna, which consist in great measure of extracts from Chalmers's Diary and Letters, amount to 38 volumes. Chalmers was great in whatever he undertook. As a man of affairs, his greatest work was what he did in leading the Free Church. As a man of letters, his greatest work was probably his Astronomical Dis- courses. None of his writings certainly have thus far had such en- during popularity. The Bridgewater Treatises. The Eev. Francis Henry Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, left at his death, 1829, eight thousand pounds sterling, to be paid to the person or persons who should prepare a suitable work on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as shown in the creation. The sum was divided be- tween eight persons, each of whom prepared a " Bridgewater " Trea- tise. The whole have been printed in 12 vols., and are considered 176 ENGLISH LITEEATURE. an extremely valuable contribution to the literature of the subject. The first of the series was by Dr. Chalmers. Tracts for the Times. Among the noticeable features, in the theological literature of this period, is a remarkable series of Essays, under the title of Tracts for the Times. These Tracts were of various sizes, from small pamphlets, such as usually pass under the name of tracts, up to good-sized volumes. The Tractarian movement began in 1833. The originators of it were Pusey, Keble, J. H. Newman, K. H. Froude, Rose, Isaac Wil- liams, Ward, and Oakley. These gentlemen thought that the Church of England was in danger from certain political tendencies in the Gov- ernment, and they resolved to undertake to counteract these tendencies by writing a series of thoughtful and scholarly tracts, setting forth, in a calm and sober way, the views which they held in regard to the character and functions of the church. The main points on which they insisted were the doctrines of Apostolical Succession, Baptismal Eegeneration, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Tracts for the first two or three years attracted little attention. After a time, however, as one tract followed another, and as the doctrines set forth became more and more sharply defined, the public mind became excited, and a general agitation ensued, which shook to the founda- tions not only the Church of England, but the Episcopal Church in the United States. Several of the leaders, Newman, Ward, Oakley, Archdeacon Wilberforce, and about two hundred other clergymen, with an equal number of prominent laymen, went over to the Church of Rome. Essays and Reviews. In 1860 a volume appeared called Essays and Reviews. It was a soit of rebound from the extreme high-church doctrines of the Tracts for the Times, and contained doctrines which it seemed difficult. for ordinary Christians to reconcile with any fixed belief in Christianity and the Bible. Being written by men who were members and digni- taries of the Church of England, the Essays and Reviews produced a prodigious agitation, and an attempt was made to silence and punish the writers, by ecclesiastical and legal proceedings, according to the forms peculiar to the English national church. A decision adverse to the writers was obtained in the Court of Arches, the highest eccle- siastical court, in 1862; but the decision was reversed on a final ap- peal to the Privy Council, in 1864. WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 177 The excitement produced by the publication of Essays and Reviews was greater even than that produced by Tracts for the Times. Be- sides the agitation of this subject in Convocation and in the Courts, more than fifty controversial volumes and pamphlets about it have been published. As under the influence of the Tracts for the Times many members of the Church of England went over to the Church of Eome, so under the influence of the Essays and Reviews many have become thoroughly and openly infidel. Isaac Taylor. Isaac Taylor, LL.D., 1787-1865, studied theology originally with the intention of preaching, and afterwards studied law, but finally settled down into the life of a literary recluse, living in the country, and sending out, from time to time, the fruits of his study and of his musings. His works are scholarly and thoughtful, though quiet and subdued in tone, and have exercised a powerful influence upon, the formation of opinion. His best known work is the Natural History of Enthusiasm. It was published anonymously, and made so deep an impression, that when the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, the highest professorship in that institution, became vacant. Dr. Chalmers publicly called upon the unknown author to declare him- self, and become a candidate for the ofiice. Taylor declared himself accordingly, and came near being elected, though the rival candidate was no less a man than Sir William Hamilton. Mrs. Sherwood. Mrs. Mary M. Sherwood, 1775-1851, was one of the first to employ fiction as a means of religious instruction to the young. She was not only a voluminous writer, but to some extent was the founder of a school of writers. The great popularity of some of her religious fic- tions for the young has contributed largely to the demand for books of this kind, which is one of the most noticeable features in the reli- gious literature of the day. The present enormous growth of Sunday- school story-books sprang from the taste created by the works of Mrs. SherAvood, and of a few other writers of the same kind. The two stories of Mrs. Sherwood's which are best known are: Little Henry and His Bearer; and Little Lucy and her Dhaye. Probably not one child in ten, in England or America, has passed through the Sunday-school without reading these two stories, which are indeed classics of their kind. M 178 ENGLISH LITERATURE. V. HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, ANTIQUITIES, ETC. Lingard. John Lingard, D.D., LL.D., 1771-1851, gained for himself lasting fame by his History of England. Lingard was educated at the Cath- olic College at Douay, in France, and took orders in the Church of Rome, but spent the greater part of his life in the composition of the great work already referred to. This was a History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of William and Mary, in 1668. Lingard's History has been subjected to severe and searching criti- cism, and has been denounced by some as a partisan work. The most deliberate assault was that made by the Edinburgh Review, in which the reviewer charged the author, not only with partisanship, but with falsifying the facts of history. The charges were so gross, and were put forth with so much boldness, that Dr. Lingard replied in a pamphlet Vindication, of great ability. Lingard's work, being a history of English affairs as seen by mem- bers of the Church of Rome, and being the fruit of original and care- ful study, with all the advantages of modern criticism and research, led many Englishmen doubtless to see, for the first time, that there were two sides to many parts of the story. The earnest discussions, however, which ensued, have not shaken the author's credit for hon- esty. The utmost that is now alleged is, that in telling the story he lias had a leaning for his own side of the question, and that his judgment of men and of affairs is to be received with some degree of caution. Of the literary merits of his work, there has been but one opinion. All his critics, the Edinburgh Reviewer included, award him the highest praise for beauty of style. ^ Sir Archibald Alison. Sir Archibald Alison, 1792-1867, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, is highly distinguished as an historian, and as a writer on political economy and on politics. He is favorably known also as a writer on law. The most important by far of all his works, however, are his histories. These are the History of Europe from the Com- mencement of the PVench Revolution to the Restoration of the Bour- bons (1789-1815), in 14 vols., 8vo, and the History of Europe from 1815 to 1852, in 6 vols. To these should be added his Life of the WORDSWORTH AND CONTEMPORARIES. 179 Duke of Marlborough, intended to be read as an introduction to the two preceding. Mr. Alison is a high Tory in politics, and this has tinctured to some extent his views of public affairs. Yet he has never been accused, even by his political opponents, of perverting the facts of history. Sharon Turner. Sharon Turner^ 1768-1847, made several important contributions to history. His best known publication is a History of the Anglo- Saxons, comprising the history of England from the earliest period to the Korman Conquest. Lord Campbell. John, Lord Campbell, 1779-1861, a native of Scotland, and a son of Dr. George Campbell, the author of Philosophy of Rhetoric, at- tained great eminence as a lawyer and a statesman ; was raised to the peerage, and made Lord Chancellor of England. He wrote the Lives of the Lord Chancellors, 7 vols., 8vo, and the Lives of the Chief Jus- tices, 3 vols. His Lives of the Chancellors and of the Chief Justices are regarded as of great historical value, besides being written in a pleasing and attractive style. VI. MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. Arnold of Rugby. Thomas Arnold, D. D., 1795-1842, is known the world over as "Arnold of Rugby," from the great educational work which he per- formed in that renowned school. Arnold was Head Master of Rugby from 1827 to the time of his death. During the last two years of his life he was also Regius Professor of Modern History in Oxford. His principal works are : History of Rome (unfinished) ; Lectures on Modern History; and Sermons (3 vols.). He published also an edi- tion of Thucydides, showing fine critical power and ripe scholarship. The great work of Arnold, however, was the religious life which he in- fused into the Rugby School, and through it, by example, into the other great public schools of England where most of the sons of high-born Englishmen are educated. This work he accomplished, partly by the singular vigor and force of his intellectual character, but mainly by the thorough, inwrought religiousness of his own life. It was what he was, quite as much as what he did, that made him a power among his boys. 180 ENGLISH L.ITERATUEE. Arnold's Life and Correspondence, by Stanley, has been published in 2 vols. But the best picture of the daily life of the great Hea^ Master is to be found in Tom Brown's School-Days at Eugby, by Hughes. Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold, 1822 , a son of Arnold of Rugby, was elected in 1857 Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford. His chief publications are : Essays in Criticism ; Culture and Anar- chy ; Schools and Universities of the Continent. Archibald Alison. Archibald Alison, 1757-1839, father of the historian, is chiefly known by his work on the Nature and Principles of Taste, first pub- lished in 1790. CHAPTER XIV. Tennyson and his Contemporaries. (1850-1873.) The last period of our work begins with 1850, and continues to the present time. After the death of Wordsworth, in 1850, the undisputed chief of English letters was Alfred Tennyson, Poet-Laureate. Tenny- son began to be distinguished about the time that Victoria became Queen, and his career as a poet is intimately associated with the reign of that great and good sovereign. The writers of this period are divided into seven sections : 1. The Poets, beginning with Tennyson ; 2. The Novelists, beginning with Dickens ; 3. Writers on Literature and Politics, beginning with Car- lyle ; 4. Writers on Philosophy and Science, beginning with Sir Wil- liam Hamilton; 5. Writers on History, Biography, Antiquities, and Travel, beginning with Macaulay ; 6. Writers on Theology and Keli- gion, beginning with John Henry Newman ; 7. Miscellaneous Writers, beginning with the Howitts. I. THE POETS. Tennyson. Alfred Tennyson, 1810 , Poet-Laureate, is one of the few thus honored who have really deserved the distinction. Like Wordsworth, Tennyson rose by slow degrees into full anfs, in that she has labored with her pen only. Besides numerous volumes of an attractive and useful kind, she has continued for forty-five years to cater monthly for the intellectual entertainment of her countrymen, through the columns of The Lady's Book and its predecessor The Ladies' Magazine. The high standard of domestic morals always observable in these magazines has undoubt- edly done much towards preserving the purity of American homes, and for this service tlie public is largely indebted to the sound sense of Sarah Josepha Hale. Besides her contributions to the Lady's Book, Mrs. Hale has pub- lished a large number of separate volumes. The largest and alto- gether the most important of all is her Woman's Eecord, a volume of 918 pages, royal 8vo, containing biographical sketches of. all distin- guished women from the earliest times down to the 5^ear 1868, and illustrated by 230 portraits. Mrs. Tuthill. Mrs. Louisa Caroline Tuthill, 1799 , has had more than ordi- nary success as a writer of books for the young, and she was one of the earliest to engage extensively in that line of composition. Her stories are marked by sobriety and good sense, and are entirely free from the extravagance and sensationalism which disfigure too many of the books now written for juvenile readers. Her books for the young are numerous, and have been very popular. The following are the titles of some of these : I will be a Lady ; I will be a Gentle- man; Onward, right Onward; Anything for Sport; The Lawyer; The Artist ; The Mechanic, etc. President Quincy. Josiah Quincy, LL. D., 1772-1864, long the honored President of Harvard University, wrote much for the public, but chiefly in the form of pamphlets and addresses on special occasions. His principal work in book-form was A History of Harvard University. FROM 1830 TO 1850. 263 Horace Mann. Horace Mann, LL. D., 1796-1859, is universally known by his writ- ings and labors in the cause of popular education. He gave to that cause a new and important impulse, the benefits of which have been felt far beyond the limits of his own time or of his personal labors. His writings were confined chiefly to his Annual Reports and his Lectures and Addresses. Schoolcraft. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, LL. D., 1793-1864, has acquired for him- self an enduring name, by his writings and researches in reference to the Indian tribes of North America. His great work, Historical In- formation concerning the Indian Tribes, etc., was published by act of Congress, in six large quarto volumes, profusely and handsomely illus- trated. The work contains an immense amount of information upon everything relating to Indian manners, mythology, antiquities, lan- guage, etc., but so poorly digested and so deficient in philosophic method as to be, in the words of Humboldt, " almost worthless." The volumes are a mine from which the gold is yet to be extracted by some future explorer. A. J. Downing. Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852, was an accomplished writer on the subject of landscape gardening, and by his publications con- tributed largely to the improvement of public taste in America, in the matter of rural adornment. The following are his principal works : Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture ; Fruit and Fruit-Trees of America ; Cottage Residences ; Architecture of Country Houses ; Rural Essays, a collection of papers printed originally in the Horti- culturist. Gallaudet. Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, LL. D., 1787-1851, is justly celebrated for his efforts in the education of deaf mutes. He was indeed the apostle of this work in the United States. Besides his labors in this direction, he wrote many valuable works. Among these, two deserve particular mention. The Child's Book of the Soul, and the Youth's Book of Natural Theology. S. G. Goodrich — '' Peter Parley." Samuel Griswold Goodrich, 1793-1863, better known as Peter Parley, was remarkably successful in simplifying various kinds of 264 AMERICAN LITERATURE. knowledge, chiefly historical, so as to make it easily understood by young readers, and consequently useful as a means of education. The Peter Parley books form a noticeable feature in the literature of the period. Mr. Goodrich's pen was kept busy to the close of his life, — how busy, may be inferred from the fact that he was either author or editor of one hundred and seventy distinct volumes ; and how far his labors were acceptable, may be judged from the fact that over seven millions of volumes of his works were sold during his lifetime. Mr. Goodrich made no pretence to classical or critical erudition or to historical research, but he had a special gift for writing in a style suited to the taste and comprehension of children, and he exercised his gift in a way that has brought lasting honor to him, and has been a public benefit to his race. His works may be classified as follows : Peter Parley books, 116 vols., on a great variety of subjects likely to interest children ; School books (Histories, Geographies, Headers, etc.), 27 vols. ; Miscellaneous, 27 vols. CHAPTER V. From isso to the Present Time. The present Chapter treats mainly of writers still living. These are divided into eleven sections: 1. The Poets, beginning with Long- fellow ; 2. Writers on Literature and Criticism, beginning with Low- ell ; 3. Magazinists, beginning with Holmes ; 4. Journalists, beginning with Bennett ; 5. Humorists, beginning with Artemus Ward ; 6. Mis- cellaneous Writers, beginning with Bayard Taylor; 7. Novelists and Writers of Tales and Travels, beginning with Hawthorne ; 8. His- torians, beginning with Prescott ; 9. Writers on Politics and Political Economy, beginning with Henry C. Carey ; 10. Scientific Writers, be- ginning with Agassiz ; 11. Writers on Keligion and Theology, begin- ning with Hodge. I. THE POETS. Longfellow. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, LL. D., 1807 , is by general consent the most distinguished living representative of the poetical literature of the country. He is clearly our American Poet-Laureate, — crowned by general suffrage, alike of the learned and the unlearned, the critic and those who read for the pleasure only that his sweet verse gives them. Prof. Longfellow began publication very early. Several of his poems which appeared before he was yet nineteen, and while still a student in college, have been retained in the collected edition of his works. One of these college poems was the Hymn of the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem, which early found its way into the reading-books of the common schools. 23 265 266 AMERICAN LITERATURE. His first volume, 1833, was Coplas de Manrique, — a translation from the Spanish, with an Essay on the Moral and Devotional Poetry of Spain. His next volume, 1835, was Outre-Mer, a Pilgrimage beyond the Sea. It was a poetical prose work, not unlike the Sketeh-Book of Washington Irving. A third volume, also of poetical prose, was Hyperion, a Romance, 1839. The same year appeared Voices of the Night, a collection of short poems, containing among others A Psalm of Life, The Eeaper and the Flowers, and The Beleaguered City. In 1841, appeared Ballads and other Poems, containing several pieces which attained immediate and lasting favor, such as The Skel- eton in Armor, God's- Acre, To the Kiver Charles, Blind Bartimeus, and Excelsior. Poems on Slavery appeared in 1842, and in the same year The Spanish Student, a Play, of which the sale has been large. In 1845, he published The Poets and Poetry of Europe, a large octavo, containing biographical and critical notices, and translations by himself and others. The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems appeared in 1846. The most noted of the pieces in this collection were The Arsenal at Spring- field, and The Old Clock on the Stairs. Evangeline, his first long poem, was published in 1847. Kavanagh, a prose tale, descriptive of New England life, appeared in 1849. The same year witnessed the publication of Seaside and Fireside, a collection of short poems. Among these were The Build- ing of the Ship, Resignation, and Sand of the Desert in an Hour-Glass. The Golden Legend, his longest single poem, was issued in 1851. It is a narrative poem, giving a lively picture of monastic and civil life in the Middle Ages, and is remarkable for its variety of style and versification. The Song of Hiawatha, another long poem, appeared in 1855. Like Evangeline, it attracted universal attention, both by the freshness of its subject and the novelty of its versification. The Courtship of Miles Standish, another long poem, also immedi- ately popular, appeared in 1858. Tales of a Wayside Inn, a collection of poems somewhat after the fashion of the Canterbury Tales, was published in 1863. The pieces in this collection which are best known are Paul Revere's Ride, and the Birds of Killingworth. A continuation of these Tales, called The Second Day, appeared in 1872. FROM 1850 TO THE PRESENT TIME. 267 Another collection appeared under the title of Birds of Passage, among its exquisite gems being The Children's Hour, and Weariness ; and in 1866 was published a volume called Flower-de-Luce and other Poems. Since that time have appeared New England Tragedies, and the Divine Tragedy. These last, it is said, are to be taken in connection with The Golden Legend, published twenty years ago, the whole forming one connected work of art, somewhat as do the successive Arthurian legends of Tennyson. In 1867, appeared the translation of Dante's Divina Commedia, in three superb octavos. It is the crowning achievement of Mr. Long- fellow's remarkable skill as a translator. From this rapid sketch it appears that Mr. Longfellow has been ac- tively and almost continuously productive as an author for almost half a century. His longer poems, The Golden Legend, Evangeline, Hia- watha, Miles Standish, The Spanish Student, and the translation of Dante, are familiarly known to all readers of English poetry. Each of his many collections of short pieces has contained some which have become household words wherever the English tongue is spoken. His utterances are in the middle key, between the matter-of-fact and the highly ideal. His verse is always tender and delicate, unobtru- sively winning its way to the heart. It is the chosen companion of our quiet, unbent moods. Whittier. John Greenleaf Whittier, 1808 , is our leading lyric poet, and, with the exception perhaps of Bryant, is the one most thoroughly American. In Mr. Whittier's poems, the life, the scenes, the charac- ters portrayed, the very atmosphere in which they move, are all in- tensely American. He has been called the Quaker Poet, in reference to his religious views and connections, and he has certainly earned for himself the title of Abolitionist, by his fierce anti-slavery philippics. Yet much of his best poetry, and especially that of his later years, shows him possessed of a large and truly catholic spirit, which finds its way to the heart of every reader. As a poet Whittier first appeared in 1831, when he published his Legends of New England, in Prose and Verse. The majority of his early poems were first published as fugitive pieces in newspapers and other periodicals, and afterwards re-issued in collections, from time to time. Thus appeared The Ballads, 1838; Lays of My Home, 1843; The Voices of Freedom, 1849 ; The Chapel of the Hermits, 1853 ; The 268 AMERICAN LITERATURE. Panorama and Other Poems, 1856 ; Home Ballads, 1860 ; In War Time, 1863; National Lyrics, 1865. Mogg Megone and Moll Pitcher ap- peared separately in 1836. Whittier's latest productions are Snow-Bound, The Tent on the Beach, Among the Hills, and Ballads of New England, which have all appeared since 1866. Bryant. William Cullen Bryant, 1794 , by the publication of Thanatop- sis, acquired, almost sixty years ago, a national reputation as a poet,^ and he has continued at brief intervals ever since to add to his laurels by some new effort, showing that hjs fire is not yet extinct, nor his vigor abated. His poems are not so numerous or so varied as those of Whittier or Longfellow, yet he is as clearly among the great poets that every American involuntarily claims as a part of the national inheritance. Mr. Bryant's poems have appeared from time to time as occasional contributions to the magazines, and have had a singular uniformity of excellence. They all show care and finish, and original observation. No English poet, living or dead, has been a more accurate observer of nature, as any one may prove who will take a volume of his poems out into the woods and fields, and read the descriptions in the very presence of what is described. Boker. George Henry Boker, 1824 , has succeeded better than any other American author in the difiicult line of dramatic composition. His principal plays, Calaynos, Anne Boleyn, Leonor de Guzman, and Francesca da Kimini, tragedies, are all conceived on the highest type of the regular drama, and are truly classical performances. In addi- tion to his dramatic compositions, he has written several other long poems, besides numerous short lyrics of great excellence. Mr. Boker has not been a prolific writer, yet something considerable from his pen every few years shows that he has not been idle ; and every new addition to his list of works has been such as to increase the admiration of the public for his poetic genius. Carefully avoiding whatever is of a sensational character, and resolutely refusing to cater to a false taste, 'even at the risk of some loss of temporary notoriety, he has wrought slowly and laboriously, after the highest ideals of ex- cellence, calmly awaiting the final verdict of assured success. The tendency of his mind, as already remarked, is towards the dramatic FROM 1850 TO THE PRESENT TIME. 269 form of composition, and his first signal success, the tragedy of Calay- nos, was in that line. As a lyric poet, however, and especially as a writer of Sonnets, his merits are of a high order. TJie following is a list of his principal publications : Calaynos, a Tragedy ; Anne Boleyn, a Tragedy ; Leonor de Guzman, a Tragedy ; The Betrothal ; The Po- desta's Daughter ; The Ivory Carver ; A Ballad of Sir John Franklin ; Song of the Earth ; Street Lyrics ; and a large number of Sonnets, Songs, and minor poems. Buchanan Read. Tliomas Buchanan Eead, 1822-1872, is almost equally celebrated as an artist and a poet, and is familiarly known as the Poet-Painter. He published several long p