ENGLISH LITERATURE. (continued 2)

3. THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION (1660-1702).—Among the able churchmen who passed from the troubles of the Commonwealth and Protectorate to the Restoration were Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Leighton, and others of eminence. South, Tillotson, and Barrow were more able theologians, but their writings lack the charm of sentiment which Leighton's warmth of heart diffuses over all his works. South (d. 1716) was a man of remarkable oratorical endowments, sarcastic, intolerant, and fierce in polemical attacks. The writings of Tillotson (d. 1694) are pervaded by a higher and better spirit, and the sermons of Barrow (d. 1677) combine comprehensiveness, sagacity, and clearness. Other divines, such as Stillingfleet, Pearson, Burnet, Bull, hold a more prominent place in the history of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the "Living Temple," which is ranked among the religious classics.

The great though untrained genius of John Bunyan (1628-1688) produced the "Pilgrim's Progress," which holds a distinguished place in permanent English literature.

John Locke (1632-1704) may be taken as the representative of the English Philosophy of the time, and his influence on the speculative opinions of his day was second only to that of Hobbes. His "Essay on the Understanding" contains the germ of utter skepticism and was the ground on which Berkeley denied the existence of the material world, and Hume involved all human knowledge in doubt.

In classical learning the greatest of the scholars of this period was Bentley (1662-1742).

In history Lord Clarendon (1608-1774) wrote the "History of the Rebellion," and Burnet (1643-1715) his "History of the Reformation," one of the most thoroughly digested works of the century. His "History of his own Times" is valuable for its facts, and for the shrewdness with which he describes the state of things around him.

In miscellaneous prose, John Evelyn wrote several useful and tasteful works, and Izaak Walton (1593-1688), a London tradesman, wrote his interesting Biographies and the quaint treatise "On Angling." Both in diction and sentiment these works remind us of the preceding age; and Walton, surviving Milton, closes the series of old English prose writers.

Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the unfortunate, ill-requited laureate of the Royalists, who satirized the Puritans and Republicans in his celebrated "Hudibras," left some exceedingly witty and vigorous prose writings; and Andrew Marvell (1620-1678), the friend and protector of Milton, was most successful in sarcastic irony, and in his attacks on the High Church opinions and doings.

John Dryden (1631-1700) was the literary chief of the interval between Cromwell and Queen Anne. His prose writings, besides comedies, are few, but in these he taught principles of poetical art previously unknown to his countrymen, and showed the capabilities of the tongue in a new light. Inferior to Dryden in vigor of thought was Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who may yet share with him the merit of having founded regular English prose. His literary character rests chiefly on his "Miscellaneous Essays."

The symmetrical structure and artificial polish of contemporaneous French literature, while it was not without some good influence on English prose, was less beneficial to poetry, and its worst effect was on the drama, which soon ceased to be pictures of human beings in action and became only descriptive of such pictures. In this walk as in others Dryden was the literary chief, and of his plays it can truly be said that the serious ones contain many striking and poetical pieces of declamation, finely versified. His comedies are bad morally, and as dramas even worse than those of his rival Shadwell. Lee was only a poor likeness of Dryden.

In the "Orphan" and "Venice Preserved" of Otway we have southing of the revival of the ancient strength of feeling though alloyed by false sentiment and poetic poverty.

Congreve showed great power of language in tragedy, and Southerne not a little nature and pathos.

In comedy the fame of these writers was eclipsed by a knot of dramatists who adopted prose, but whose works are the foulest that ever disgraced the literature of a nation. They are excellent specimens of that which has been called the comedy of manners; vice is inextricably interwoven in the texture of all alike, in the broad humor of Wycherly (the most vigorous of the set), in the wit of Congreve, in the character painting of Vanbrugh, and the lively invention of Farquhar.

In other kinds of poetry we find similar changes of taste which affected the art injuriously, although the increased attention paid to correctness and refinement was a step in improvement. These mischievous changes related both to the themes and forms of poetry, and in neither can the true functions of art be forgotten without injury to the work. An age must be held unpoetical, and cannot produce great poetical works, if its poetry chooses insufficient topics; and the aims of the age of the Restoration were low, producing only a constant crop of poems celebrating contemporary events or incidents in the lives of individuals. The dramatic and narrative forms of poetry are undoubtedly those in which that imaginative excitement of pleasing emotion, which is the immediate and characteristic end of the art, may be most powerfully worked out, and to one of these forms all the greatest poems have belonged. But in the age of the Restoration the drama had lost its elevation and poetic significance, and original narrative poetry was hardly known. Almost all the poems of the day were didactic, and the prevalence of this style of poetry is a palpable symptom of an unpoetical age. The verse-making of these forty years, after setting aside a very few works, maintains a dead level. Among the dwarfish rhymers of the day there lingered some of the august shapes of a former age. Milton still walked his solitary course, and Waller wrote his occasional odes and verses, but of names not already given there are no more than two or three that require commemoration. One of the famous poems of the day was an "Essay on Translated Verse," by Lord Roscommon; and the smaller poems of Marvell are felicitous in feeling and diction; both writers are distinguished for their moral purity.

The "Hudibras" of Butler, which properly belongs to the age before, is a phenomenon in the history of English literature. His pungent wit, his extraordinary ingenuity, and his command of words are rare endowments, but he has no poetic vein that yields jewels of the first water, and his place is not a high one in the path which leads upward to the ethereal regions of the imagination.

Pryor (1661-1721) in his lighter pieces shows wit of a less manly kind. His serious poems have great facility of phrase and melody.

Dryden was a man of high endowments as a poet and thinker, condemned to labor for a corrupt generation, and he has received from posterity no higher fame than that of having improved English prose style and versification. His poems are rather essays couched in vigorous verse, with here and there passages of great poetical beauty. His "Annus Mirabilis," celebrating with great animation the year 1666, is an effusion of historical panegyric. The "Absalom and Achitophel" is a satire on the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth and his adviser Shaftesbury. "The Hind and Panther," full of poetical and satirical force, was an argument to justify the author's recent change of religion. One of the most thoroughly sustained poems is the "Ode on Alexander's Feast." His translation of the Aeneid, as imperfect a picture of the original as Pope's translation of the Iliad, is yet full of vigor and one of his best specimens of the heroic couplet, a measure never so well written in English as by Dryden.

4. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.—The influence of the eighteenth century on prose style has been great and permanent, and the two dissimilar manners of writing which were then formed, have contributed to all that is distinctive in our modern form of expression. The earlier of these is found in the language of Addison and Swift, the later in that of Johnson. The style of Addison and his friends reproduced those genuine idiomatic peculiarities of our speech which had been received into the conversation of intelligent men. The style of which Johnson was the characteristic example abandons in part the native and familiar characteristics of the Saxon for those expressions and forms common to the modern European tongues. Large use was made of words derived from the Latin, which, in addition to the effect of novelty, gave greater impressiveness and pomp to the style.

In the First Generation, named from Queen Anne, but including also the reign of George I. (d. 1727), the drama scarcely deserves more than a parenthesis. Although the moral tone had improved, it was still not high, when Gray's "Beggar's Opera" and Cibber's "Careless Husband" were the most famous works. The "Fair Penitent" has been noticed as a clever plagiarism from Massinger; in Addison's "Cato" the strict rules of the French stage were preserved, but its stately and impressive speeches cannot be called dramatic. The "Revenge" of Young had more of tragic passion; but it wanted the force of characterization which seemed to have been buried with the old dramatists.

The heroic measure, as it was now used, aimed at smoothness of melody and pointedness of expression, and in this the great master was Pope.

In the poems of Pope (1688-1744), we find passages beautifully poetical, exquisite thoughts, vigorous portraits of character, shrewd observation, and reflective good sense, but we are wafted into no bright world of imagination, rapt in no dream of strong passion, and seldom raised into any high region of moral thought. Like all the poets of his day, he set a higher value on skill of execution than on originality of conception, and systematically abstained from all attempts to excite imagination or feeling. The taste of the poet and of his times is most clearly shown in his "Essay on Criticism," published before his twenty-first year. None of his works unites more happily, regularity of plan, shrewdness of thought, and beauty of verse. His most successful effort, the "Rape of the Lock," assumed its complete shape in his twenty-sixth year, and is the best of all mock-heroic poems. The sharpest wit, the keenest dissection of the follies of fashionable life, the finest grace of diction, and the softest flow of melody, come appropriately to adorn a tale in which we learn how a fine gentleman stole a lock of a lady's hair. In the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard," and in the "Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady," he attempted the pathetic not altogether in vain. The last work of his best years was his "Translation of the Iliad;" of the Odyssey he translated only half. Both misrepresent the natural and simple majesty of manner which the ancient poet never lost; yet if we could forget Homer, we might be proud of them. In the "Dunciad" he threw away an infinity of wit upon writers who would not otherwise have been remembered. His "Essay on Man" contains much exquisite poetry and finely solemn thought; it abounds in striking passages which, by their felicities of fancy, good sense, music, and extraordinary terseness of diction, have gained a place in the memory of every one.

Among the philosophical writers none holds so prominent a place as Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753), whose refinement of style and subtlety of thought have seldom been equaled. His philosophical Idealism exercised much influence on the course of metaphysical inquiry.

Lord Shaftesbury's brilliant but indistinct treatises have also been the germ of many discussions in ethics.

Bolingbroke wrote with great liveliness, but with equal shallowness of thought and knowledge.

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) is not likely to be forgotten on account of one of his many novels, "Robinson Crusoe." His idiomatic English style is not one of the least of his merits.

Among the prose writings of Swift (1667-1745) there is none that is not a masterpiece of strong Saxon-English, and none quite destitute of his keen wit or cutting sarcasm. His satirical romances are most pungent when human nature is his victim, as in "Gulliver's Travels;" and not less amusing in "The Battle of the Books," or where he treats of church disputes in the "Tale of a Tub." The burlesque memoir of "Martinus Scriblerus" was the joint production of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot.

It contains more good criticism than any of the serious writings of the generation, and it abounds in the most biting strokes of wit. Arbuthnot is supposed to have been the sole author of the whimsical, national satire called the "History of John Bull," the best work of the class produced in that day. The "Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu" belong to this age.

Of all the popular writers, however, that adorned the reign of Queen Anne and her successor, those whose influence has been the greatest and most salutary are the Essayists, among whom Joseph Addison and Richard Steele are preeminently distinguished.

"The Tatler," begun in Ireland by Steele, aided first by Swift, and afterwards by Addison, appeared three times a week from 1709 to 1711; "The Spectator," in which Addison took the lead, from 1711 to 1712; and "The Guardian," a part of the next year. Steele (1676-1729) had his merits somewhat unfairly clouded by the fame of his coadjutor. The extraordinary popularity of those periodicals, especially "The Spectator," was creditable to the reading persons of the community, then much fewer than now. The writers discarded from their papers all party-spirit, and designed to make them the vehicle of judicious teaching in morals, manners, and literary criticism. Thus they widened the circle of readers, and raised the standard of taste and thinking.

Of some of the more serious papers of the "Spectator," those of Addison (1672-1719) on the "Immortality of the Soul" and the "Pleasures of the Imagination" may be cited.

Among the theological writers of the Second Generation of the eighteenth century (the reign of George II., 1726-1760), one of the most famous in his day, though not the most meritorious, was Bishop Warburton; Bishop Butler (d. 1752), wrote his "Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature," a work of extraordinary force of thought; and there is much literary merit in the writings of the pious Watts and the devout Doddridge. The increasing zeal both in the Church of England and among the Dissenters, and the more cordial recognition of the importance of religion, greatly affected the literature of the times.

Philosophy had also its distinguished votaries. The philosophical works of Hume (1711-1776) are allowed by those who dissent most strenuously from their results to have constituted an epoch in the history of the science. In accepting the principles which had been received before him, and showing that they led to no conclusion but universal doubt, he laid bare the flaws in the system, and prepared the way for the subtle speculations of Kant and the more cautious systems of Reid and the Scottish school.

The miscellaneous literature of this, the age of Johnson, cannot stand comparison with that of the preceding, which was headed by Addison.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), one of the most celebrated of the professional authors of the eighteenth century, however, belongs to this period. Compelled by poverty to leave his education uncompleted, he sought the means of living in London, where, for a long time, unpatronized and obscure, he labored with dogged perseverance, until at length he won a fame which must have satisfied the most grasping ambition, but when, as he says, "most of those whom he had wished to please had sunk into the grave, and he had little to fear from censure or praise." That the reputation of his writings was above their deserts, cannot be denied, though it must also be admitted that the literature of our time is deficient in many of their excellences, both of thought and expression. They are the fruit of a strong and original mind, working with imperfect knowledge and an inadequate scope for activity. The language of Johnson is superior to his matter; he has striking force of diction, and many of his sentences roll on the ear like the sound of the distant sea, while the thoughts they convey impress us so vividly that we are slow to scrutinize them. His great merit lies in the two departments of morals and criticism, but everywhere he is inconsistent and unequal. His Dictionary occupied him for eight years, but it is of little value now to the student of language, being poor and incorrect in etymology and unsatisfactory though acute in definition. His poems, which are of Pope's school, would scarcely have preserved his name. The "Rambler," and "Rasselas," are characteristic of his merits and defects. The "Tour to the Hebrides" is one of the most pleasant and easy of his writings. His "Lives of the Poets" is admirable for its skill of narration, but it is alternately enlightened and unsound in criticism, and frequently marred by political prejudices and personal jealousies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Odes of Collins (1720-1759) have more of the fine and spontaneous enthusiasm of genius than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close his tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones is very wide, and the delicacy of gradation with which he passes from thought to thought has an indescribable charm. His most popular poem, "The Passions," conveys no adequate idea of some of his most marked characteristics. All can understand the beauty and simplicity of his odes "To Pity," "To Simplicity," "To Mercy;" and the finely woven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures in the "Ode to Evening" recall the youthful poems of Milton.

Between the period just reviewed and the reign of George III., or the Third Generation of the eighteenth century, there were several connecting links, one of which was formed by a group of historians whose works are classical monuments of English literature. The publication of Hume's "History of England" began in 1754. Robertson's "History of Scotland" appeared in 1759, followed by his "Reign of Charles V." and his "History of America;" Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was completed in twelve years from 1776. The narrative of Hume is told with great clearness, good sense, and quiet force of representation, and if his matter had been as carefully studied as his manner, if his social and religious theories had been as sound as his theory of literary art, his history would still hold a place from which no rival could hope to degrade it.

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

The learning of Gibbon (1737-1794), though not always exact, was remarkably extensive, and sufficient to make him a trustworthy guide, unless in those points where he was inclined to lead astray. There is a patrician haughtiness in the stately march of his narrative and in the air of careless superiority with which he treats his heroes and his audience. He is a master in the art of painting and narration, nor is he less skillful in indirect insinuation, which is, indeed, his favorite mode of communicating his own opinions, but he is most striking in those passages in his history of the church, where he covertly attacks a religion which he neither believed nor understood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the third department, Ethics, are Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiment," Tucker's "Light of Nature," and Paley's "Moral and Political Philosophy."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Darwin, in his "Botanic Garden," went back to the mazes of didactic verse. Seattle's (1735-1803) "Minstrel" is the outpouring of a mind exquisitely poetical in feeling; it is a kind of autobiography or analytic narrative of the early growth of a poet's mind and heart, and is one of the most delightful poems in our language.

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

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

5. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—In the illustrious band of poets who enriched the literature of England during the first generation of the present century, there are four who have gained greater fame than any others, and exercised greater influence on their contemporaries. These are Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, who, though unlike, yet in respect of their ruling spirit and tendencies may be classed in pairs as they have been named; and all whose works call for exact scrutiny may be distributed into four groups. In the first of them stand Thomas Campbell and Robert Southey, dissimilar to each other, and differing as widely from their contemporaries. Campbell (1777-1844) employed an unusually delicate taste in elaborating his verses both in diction and melody. His "Pleasures of Hope" was written between youth and manhood, and "Gertrude of Wyoming," the latest of his productions worthy of him, appeared soon after his thirtieth year. His mind, deficient in manly vigor of thought, had worked itself out in the few first bursts of youthful emotion, but no one has clothed with more of romantic sweetness the feelings and fancies which people the fairy-land of early dreams, or thrown around the enchanted region a purer atmosphere of moral contemplation.

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

The second group of poets, unless Moore find a place in it, will contain only Scott and Byron, who were in succession the most popular of all, and owed their popularity mainly to characteristics which they had in common. They are distinctively the poets of active life. They portray idealized resemblances of the scenes of reality, events which arise out of the universal relations of society, hopes, fears, and wishes which are open to the consciousness of all mankind. The originals of Scott were the romances of chivalry, and this example was applied by Byron to the construction of narratives founded on a different kind of sentiment. Scott, wearying of the narrow round that afforded him no scope for some of his best and strongest powers, turned aside to lavish them on his prose romances, and Byron, as his knowledge grew and his meditations became deeper, rose from Turkish tales to the later cantos of "Childe Harold."

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

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

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

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

Coleridge (1772-1834) is the most original of the poets of his very original time, and among the most original of its thinkers. His most frequent tone of feeling is a kind of romantic tenderness or melancholy, often solemnized by an intense access of religious awe. This fine passion is breathed out most finely when it is associated with some of his airy glimpses of external nature, and his power of suggestive sketching is not more extraordinary than his immaculate taste and nervous precision of language. His images may be obscure, from the moonlight haze in which they float, but they are rarely so through faults of diction. It is disappointing to remember that this gifted man executed little more than fragments; his life ebbed away in the contemplation of undertakings still to be achieved, the result of weakness of will rather than of indolence. The romance of "Christabel," the most powerful of all his works, and the prompter of Scott and Byron, was thrown aside when scarce begun, and stands as an interrupted vision of mysterious adventures clothed in the most exquisite fancies. His tragedy of "Remorse" is full of poetic pictures; the "Ode to the Departing Year" shows his force of thought and moral earnestness; "Khubla Khan" represents in its gorgeous incoherence his singular power of lighting up landscapes with thrilling fancies; and "The Dark Ladye" is one of the most tender and romantic love-poems ever written.

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

Wilson, Shelley, and Keats make up the fourth poetical group. The principal poems of Professor Wilson (1785-1854) are the "Isle of Palms," a romance of shipwreck and solitude, full of rich pictures and delicate pathos, and the "City of the Plague," a series of dramatic scenes, representing with great depth of emotion a domestic tragedy from the plague of London.

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

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

If we would apprehend the fullness and firmness of the powers of Shelley (1792-1822) without remaining ignorant of his weakness, we might study the lyrical drama of "Prometheus Unbound," a marvelous galaxy of dazzling images and wildly touching sentiments, or the "Alastor," a scene in which the melancholy quiet of solitude is visited but by the despairing poet who lies down to die. We find here, instead of sympathy with ordinary and universal feelings, warmth for the abstract and unreal, or, when the poet's own unrest prompts, as in the "Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples," a strain of lamentation which sounds like a passionate sigh. Instead of clearness of thinking, we find an indistinctness which sometimes amounts to the unintelligible. In the "Revolt of Islam," his most ambitious poem, it is often difficult to apprehend even the outlines of the story.

No youthful poet ever exhibited more thorough possession of those faculties that are the foundation of genius than Keats (1798-1820), and it is impossible to say what he might have been had he lived to become acquainted with himself and with mankind. It was said of his "Endymion" most truly, that no book could be more aptly used as a test to determine whether a reader has a genuine love for poetry. His works have no interest of story, no insight into human nature, no clear sequence of thought; they are the rapturous voice of youthful fancy, luxuriating in a world of beautiful unrealities.

It may be questioned whether Crabbe and Moore are entitled to rank with the poets already reviewed.

Crabbe's (1754-1832) "Metrical Tales," describing everyday life, are striking, natural, and sometimes very touching, but they are warmed by no kindly thoughts and elevated by nothing of ideality.

Moore (1780-1851), one of the most popular of English poets, will long be remembered for his songs, so melodious and so elegant in phrase. His fund of imagery is inexhaustible, but oftener ingenious than poetical. His Eastern romances in "Lalla Rookh," with all their occasional felicities, are not powerful poetic narratives. He was nowhere so successful as in his satirical effusions of comic rhyme, in which his fanciful ideas are prompted by a wit so gayly sharp, and expressed with a neatness and pointedness so unusual, that it is to be regretted that these pieces should be condemned to speedy forgetfulness, as they must be, from the temporary interest of their topics.

Among the works of the numerous minor poets, the tragedies of Joanna Baillie, with all their faults as plays, are noble additions to the literature, and the closest approach made in recent times to the merit of the old English drama. After these may be named the stately and imposing dramatic poems of Milman, Maturin's impassioned "Bertram," and the finely- conceived "Julian" of Miss Mitford.

Rogers and Bowles have given us much of pleasing and reflective sentiment, accompanied with great refinement of taste.

To another and more modern school belong Procter (Barry Cornwall) and Leigh Hunt; the former the purer in taste, the latter the more original and inventive.

Some of the lyrical and meditative poems of Walter Savage Landor are very beautiful; his longer poems sometimes delight but oftener puzzle us by their obscurity of thought and want of constructive skill.

The poems of Mrs. Hemans breathe a singularly attractive tone of romantic and melancholy sweetness, and many of the ballads and songs of Hogg and Cunningham will not soon be forgotten.

The poems of Kirke White are more pleasing than original. Montgomery has written, besides many other poems, not a few meditative and devotional pieces among the best in the language. Pollok's "Course of Time" is the immature work of a man of genius who possessed very imperfect cultivation. It is clumsy in plan and tediously dissertative, but it has passages of genuine poetry. The pleasing verses of Bishop Heber and the more recent effusions of Keble may also be named.

Of the Scotch poets, James Hogg (d. 1835) is distinguished for the beauty and creative power of his fairy tales, and Allan Cunningham (d. 1842) for the fervor, simplicity, and natural grace of his songs.

Edward Lytton Bulwer (Lord Lytton) deserves honorable mention for his high sense of the functions of poetic art; for the skill with which his dramas are constructed, and for the overflowing picturesqueness which fills his "King Arthur." Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, is vigorous in conception, and Hood has a remarkable union of grotesque humor with depth of serious feeling.

Henry Taylor (b. 1800) deserves notice for the fine meditativeness and well-balanced judgment shown in his dramas and prose essays. "Philip Van Artevelde" is his masterpiece.

The poems of Arthur Hugh Clough (d. 1861) are worthy of attention, although it may be doubted if his genius reached its full development; in those of Milnes (Lord Houghton, b. 1809), emotion and intellect are harmoniously blended. R.H. Horne (d. 1884) is the author of some noble poems; Aytoun (d. 1865), of many ballads of note; and in Kingsley (d. 1875) the poetic faculty finds its best expression in his popular lyrics.

Alfred Tennyson (b. 1810) is by eminence the representative poet of his era. The central idea of his poetry is that of the dignity and efficiency of law in its widest sense and of the progress of the race. The elements which form his ideal of human character are self-reverence, self- knowledge, self-control, the recognition of a divine order, of one's own place in that order, and a faithful adhesion to the law of one's highest life. "In Memoriam" is his most characteristic work, distinctly a poem of this century, the great threnody of our language. The "Idylls of the King" present in epic form the Christian ideal of chivalry.

In Browning (b. 1812) the greatness and glory of man lie not in submission to law, but in infinite aspiration towards something higher than himself. He must perpetually grasp at things attainable by his highest striving, and, finding them unsatisfactory, he is urged on by an endless series of aspirations and endeavors. In his poetry strength of thought struggles through obscurity of expression, and he is at once the most original and unequal of living poets.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (d. 1861) may be regarded as the representative of her sex in the present age. The instinct of worship, the religion of humanity, and a spiritual unity of zeal, love, and worship preside over her work.

To this period belong the writings of Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Blackwood, Mrs. Crosland, Mary Howitt, and Eliza Cook.

FICTION.—Previous to the appearance of Scott's novels the department of prose writing had undergone an elevating process in the hands of Godwin, Miss Austen, Miss Porter, and Miss Edgeworth. "Waverley" appeared in 1814, and the series which followed with surprising rapidity obtained universal and unexampled popularity. The Waverley Novels are not merely love stories, but pictures of human life animated by sentiments which are cheerful and correct, and they exhibit history in a most effective light without degrading facts or falsifying them beyond the lawful stretch of poetical embellishment. These novels stand in literary value as far above all other prose works of fiction as those of Fielding stand above all others in the language except these.

The novels of Lockhart are strong in the representation of tragic passion. Wilson, in his "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," shows the visionary loveliness and pathos which appear in his poems, though they give no scope to those powers of sarcasm and humor which found expression elsewhere. Extremes in the tone of thought and feeling are shown in the despondent imagination of Mrs. Shelley and the coarse and shrewd humor of Galt. To this time belong Hope's "Anastasius," which unites reflectiveness with pathos, and the delightful scenes which Miss Mitford has constructed by embellishing the facts of English rural life.

Among the earlier novels of the time, those of Bulwer had more decidedly than the others the stamp of native genius. Though not always morally instructive, they have great force of serious passion, and show unusual skill of design. In some of his later works he rises into a much higher sphere of ethical contemplation. The novels of Theodore Hook, sparkling as they are, have no substance to endure long continuance, nor is there much promise of life in the showy and fluent tales of James, the sea-stories of Marryat, or the gay scenes of Lever. The novels and sketches of Mrs. Marsh and Mrs. Hall are pleasing and tasteful; Mrs. Trollope's portraits of character are rough and clever caricatures. In describing the lower departments of Irish life, Banim is the most original, Griffin weaker, and Carleton better than either. The novels of Disraeli are remarkable for their brilliant sketches of English life and their embodiment of political and social theories. Miss Martineau's stories are full of the writer's clearness and sagacity. Kingsley, the head of the Christian socialistic school, is the author of many romances, and the eloquent preacher of a more earnest and practical Christianity. The narrative sketches of Douglas Jerrold deserve a place among the speculative fictions of the day.

Charlotte Bronté (1816-1855) had consummate mastery of expression, and a perception of the depth of human nature that is only revealed through suffering experience. The works of her sister Emily show a powerful imagination, regulated by no consideration of beauty of proportion, or of artistic feeling.

Among those writers who aim at making the novel illustrate questions that agitate society most powerfully are the founders of a new school of novelists, Thackeray and Dickens (1812-1870). The former has given his pictures of society all that character they could receive from extraordinary skill of mental analysis, acute observation, and strength of sarcastic irony, but he has never been able to excite continuous and lively sympathy either by interesting incidents or by deep passion. Dickens has done more than all which Thackeray has left unattempted; while his painting of character is as vigorous and natural, his power of exciting emotion ranges with equal success from horror sometimes too intense, to melting pathos, and thence to a breadth of humor which degenerates into caricature. He cannot soar into the higher worlds of imagination, but he becomes strong, inventive, and affecting the moment his foot touches the firm ground of reality, and nowhere is he more at ease, more sharply observant, or more warmly sympathetic, than in scenes whose meanness might have disgusted, or whose moral foulness might have appalled. Of the later novelists, the names of Mrs. Craik (Miss Muloch) and Charles Reade (d. 1884) may be mentioned as having acquired a wide popularity.

HISTORY.—In history Niebuhr's masterly researches have communicated their spirit to the "Roman History" of Arnold; the history of Greece has assumed a new aspect in the hands of Thirlwall and Grote; and that of Grecian literature has been In part excellently related by Muir (d. 1860). Modern history has likewise been cultivated with great assiduity, and several works of great literary merit have appeared which are valuable as storehouses of research. Macaulay, in his great work, "The History of England," showed that history might be written as it had not been before, telling the national story with accuracy and force, making it as lively as a novel, through touches of individual interest and teaching precious truths with fascinating eloquence. Alison's "History of Europe" takes its place among the highest works of its kind. Carlyle's "History of the French Revolution" and "Life of Frederic the Great" are most picturesque, attractive, and original works. The History of the Norman Conquest of England is the most important work of Freeman. Buckle (d. 1882) in his Introduction to the projected History of Civilization in Europe reiterated the theory that all events depend upon the action of inevitable law.

CRITICISM AND REVIEWS.—In the art of criticism, Hallam's (d. 1859) "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries" has taken its place as a classical standard. Among the fragments of criticism, the most valuable are those of De Quincey (d. 1860). The essays of Macaulay (d. 1860) are among the most impressive of all the periodical papers of our century.

In Carlyle, a generous sentiment alternates with despondent gloom and passionate restlessness and inconsistency. But it is impossible to hear, without a deep sense of original power, the oracular voices that issue from the cell; enigmatical, like the ancient responses, and like them illuminating doubtful vaticination with flashes of wild and half poetic fantasy. His language and thoughts alike set aside hereditary rules, and are compounded of elements, English and German, and elements predominant over all, which no name would fit except that of the author.

Among numerous other writers may he mentioned the names of William and Mary Howitt, Isaac Taylor, Arthur Helps, and the brothers Hare, and in art-criticism the brilliant and paradoxical Ruskin (b. 1819) and the accomplished Mrs. Jameson (d. 1860).

The writings of Christopher North (Professor Wilson) are characterized by the quaintest humor and the most practical shrewdness combined with tender and passionate emotion (d. 1854). Those of Charles Lamb (d. 1835) it is impossible to describe intelligibly to those who have not read them. Some of his scenes are in sentiment, imagery, and style the most anomalous medleys by which readers were ever alternately perplexed and amused, moved and delighted.

No man of his time influenced social science so much as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Of his immediate pupils James Mill is the ablest, Cobbett, a vigorous and idiomatic writer of English, in the course of his long life advocated all varieties of political principle. In political science we have the accurate McCulloch; Malthus, known through his Theory of Population; and Ricardo, the most original thinker in science since Adam Smith.

Foster (1770-1843) had originality and a wider grasp of mind than the other two. Hall (1761-1831) is more eloquent, but in oratorical power Chalmers (1780-1847) was one of the great men of our century, which has produced few comparable to him in original keenness of intuition, and who combined so much power of thought with so much power of impressive communication.

In philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) is one of the most attractive writers. Thomas Brown (1778-1820), his successor in the chair of Edinburgh, exhibited a subtlety of thought hardly ever exceeded in the history of philosophy; probably no writings on mental philosophy were ever so popular.

Equally worthy of a place in the annals of their era are those dissertations on the History of Philosophy contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Playfair, Leslie, and Mackintosh, and a system of Ethics by Bentham. Among the speculations in mental philosophy must also be placed a group of interesting treatises on the "Theory of the Sublime and Beautiful," a matter deeply important to poetry and the other fine arts, represented by Alison's essays on Taste, Jeffrey's on Beauty, and by contributions from Stewart, Thomas Brown, and Payne Knight.

In political economy John Mill is one of the most powerful and original minds of the nineteenth century. The pure sciences of mind have been enriched by important accessions; logic has been vigorously cultivated in two departments; on the one hand by Mill and Whewell, the former following the tendencies of Locke and Hobbes, the latter that of the German school; on the other hand, Archbishop Whately has expounded the Aristotelian system with clearness and sagacity, and De Morgan has attempted to supply certain deficiencies in the old analysis. But by far the greatest metaphysician who has appeared in the British empire during the present century is Sir William Hamilton. In his union of powerful thinking with profound and varied erudition, he stands higher, perhaps, than any other man whose name is preserved in the annals of modern speculation.

REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.—A most curious and important fact in the literary history of the age is the prominence acquired by the leading Reviews and Magazines. Their high position was secured and their power founded beyond the possibility of overturn by the earliest of the series, the "Edinburgh Review." Commenced in 1802, it was placed immediately under the editorship of Francis Jeffrey, who conducted it till 1829. In the earlier part of its history there were not many distinguished men of letters in the empire who did not furnish something to its contents; among others were Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Malthus, Playfair, Mackintosh, and Sydney Smith. Differences of political opinion led to the establishment of the "London Quarterly," which advocated Tory principles, the Edinburgh being the organ of the Whigs. Its editors were first Gifford and then Lockhart, and it numbered among its contributors many of the most famous men of the time. The "Westminster Review" was established in 1825 as the organ of Jeremy Bentham and his disciples.

"Blackwood's Magazine," begun 1817, has contained articles of the highest literary merit. It was the unflinching and idolatrous advocate of Wordsworth, and some of its writers were the first translators of German poetry and the most active introducers of German taste and laws in poetical criticism.

The best efforts in literary criticism—the most brilliant department of recent literature, have been with few exceptions essays in the periodicals. Among the essayists the name of Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) stands highest. In his essays selected for republication we find hardly any branch of general knowledge untouched, and while he treated none without throwing on them some brilliant ray of light, he contributed to many of them truths alike valuable and original. His criticisms on Poetry are flowing and spirited, glittering with a gay wit and an ever-ready fancy, and often blossoming into exquisite felicities of diction. While Macaulay uses poets and their works as hints for constructing picturesque dissertations on man and society, and while poetical reading prompts Wilson to enthusiastic bursts of original poetry, Jeffrey, fervid in his admiration of genius, but conscientiously stern in his respect for art, tries poetry by its own laws, and his writings are invaluable to those who desire to learn the principles of poetical criticism. A high place among the critical essayists must also be assigned to William Hazlitt, who in his lectures and elsewhere did manful service towards reviving the study of ancient poetry, and who prompts to study and speculation all readers, and not the least those who hesitate to accept his critical opinions.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE.—The spirit of philosophical inquiry and discovery is increasing in England, and is everywhere accompanied by a growing tendency to popularize all branches of science, and to bring them before the general mind in an attractive form.

The physical sciences have made marvelous advances; many brilliant discoveries have been made during the present and last generation, and many scientific men have brought much power of mind to bear on questions lying apart from their principal studies; among them are Sir David Brewster, Sir John Herschel, Sir John Playfair, Sir Charles Lyell, Hugh Miller, Buckland, and Professor Whewell.

SINCE 1860.

1. POETRY.—Matthew Arnold (b. 1822) has written some of the most refined verse of our day, and among critics holds the first rank. Algernon Swinburne (b. 1837) excels all living poets in his marvelous gift of rhythm and command over the resources of the language. Dante Rossetti (d. 1883) had great lyrical power; Robert Buchanan has large freedom and originality of style; Edwin Arnold has extraordinary popularity in the United States for his remarkable poem, "The Light of Asia," and for other poems on Oriental subjects; Lord Lytton ("Owen Meredith") has a place of honor among poets as the author of "Lucile" and other poems; William Morris writes in the choicest fashion of romantic narrative verse. Among other poets of the present generation whose writings are marked by excellences of various kinds are Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Cosmo Monkhonse, Andrew Lang, Philip Marston, and Arthur O'Shaughnessy.

The poems of Jean Ingelow have a merited popularity; those of Adelaide Procter (d. 1864) are pervaded by a beautiful spirit of faith and hope; Christina Rossetti shows great originality and deep and serious feeling. The lyrics and dramas of Augusta Webster are marked by strength and breadth of thought; the ballads, sonnets, and other poems of Mary Robinson show that she possesses the true gift of song.

2. FICTION.—The writings of Mrs. Lewes, "George Eliot" (1815-1880), are the work of a woman of rare genius, and place her among the greatest novelists England has produced. They are in sympathy with all the varieties of human character, and written in a spirit of humanity that is allied with every honest aspiration.

Anthony Trollope (d. 1884) has produced many works remarkable for their accurate pictures of English life and character. George Macdonald and Wilkie Collins are novelists of great merit, as are William Black, Richard Blackmore, Mrs. Oliphant, Edmund Yates, Justin McCarthy.

3. SCIENCE.—Herbert Spencer (b. 1820) as early as 1852 advanced the theory of the natural and gradual coalition of organic life upon this globe. In 1855, in his "Principles of Psychology," he gave a new exposition of the laws of mind, based upon this principle, and held that it is by experience, registered in the slowly perfecting nervous system, that the mental faculties have been gradually evolved through long courses of descent, each generation inheriting all that had been previously gained, and adding its own increment to the sum of progress; that all knowledge, and even the faculties of knowing, originate in experience, but that the primary elements of thought are a priori intuitions to the individual derived from ancestral experience. Thus the intuitional and experience hypotheses, over which philosophers had so long disputed, were here for the first time reconciled. This work, the first permanent scientific result of the application of the law of evolution, formed a turning-point in the thought of the scientific world. Spencer's prospectus of a philosophical system, in which the principles of evolution were applied to the subjects of life, mind, society, and morals, appeared in 1858, maturely elaborated in its scientific proofs and applications, thus preceding the works of other evolutionary writers, the most distinguished of whom, Charles Darwin (1809-1883), has been more identified in the popular mind with the theories of evolution than Spencer himself. The writings of Darwin have had a wider influence and have been the subject of more controversy than those of any other contemporary writer. In his "Origin of Species" he accounts for the diversities of life on our globe by means of continuous development, without the intervention of special creative fiats at the origin of each species, and to this organic evolution he added the important principle of natural selection. He may be regarded as the great reformer of biology and the most distinguished naturalist of the age. Tyndall (b. 1810) has done more than any other writer to popularize great scientific truths. Huxley (b. 1825) stands foremost among physiologists and naturalists.

Among numerous other writers distinguished in various branches of science a few only can be here named. Walter Bagehot writes on Political Society; Alexander Bain on Mind and Body; Henry Maudsley on Brain and Mind; Norman Lockyer on Spectrum Analysis; and Sir John Lubbock on Natural History.

4. MISCELLANEOUS.—The most distinguished historian of the times is James Anthony Froude (b. 1818), who, in his "Short Studies," shows the same vigor of thought and power of description that render his history so fascinating. The histories of John Richard Green are valuable for their original research, and have a wide celebrity. Max Müller has rendered important services to the sciences of Philology and Ethnology, by his researches in Oriental languages and literatures. Lecky is eminent for his history of "Rationalism in Europe" and "History of Morals." Leslie Stephen, John Morley, and Addington Symonds are distinguished in various departments of criticism and history. Justin McCarthy, in his "History of our own Times," has skillfully presented an intellectual panorama of the period.

Hamerton writes on Art and on general topics with keen and critical observation. Lewes (d. 1878) is the able expounder of the philosophy of Comte. Frances Power Cobbe, in her "Intuitive Morals" and other works, shows strong reasoning powers and great earnestness of purpose. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) holds a high place as a writer on Political Economy, Liberty, and on the Subjection of Women. The periodicals and newspapers of the day show remarkable intellectual ability, and represent the best contemporary thought in England in all departments.