Sir Roger de Coverley; the retired merchant, Sir Andrew Freeport; Capt. Sentry, the old soldier; Will Honeycomb, the beau;-besides a stage-bitten barrister, and a clergyman. There is no doubt that Addison believed himself to be engaged in an important work, tending to humanise and elevate his countrymen :-'It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I should be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses.'1 By turning to fresh intellectual fields the minds of the upper classes--the people in good society-to whom the theatre was now a forbidden or despised excitement, Addison did without doubt allay much restlessness, still or amuse many feverish longings. The millennium, it seemed, was not to come yet awhile; the fifth monarchy was not to be yet established; no, nor was the world to become a great Armida's garden of pleasure and jollity; nor did blind loyalty to the true prince commend itself now even to the heart much less to the reason. Robbed of its ideals, disenchanted, and in heavy cheer, the English mind, though not profoundly interested, read these pleasant chatty discoursings about things in general, and allowed itself to be amused, and half forgot its spiritual perplexities. Nothing was settled by these papers, nothing really probed to the bottom; but they taught, with much light grace and humour, lessons of good sense, tolerance, and moderation; and their popularity proved that the lesson was relished. The Spectator extended to 635 numbers, including the eighty of the resumed issue in 1714. Upon its suspension in December, 1712, the Guardian took its place. Of the 271 papers in the Tatler, Steele wrote 188, Addison 42, and both conjointly 36. Of 635 Spectators, Addison wrote 274, Steele 240, Eustace Budgell 2 37, and John Hughes 11; and of 175 Guardians, Steele wrote 82, and Addison 53. Several Tatlers were contributed by Swift, and a few Spectators and Guardians by Pope. Among the subjects treated of in the Spectator are the following:-Masquerades, clubs, operas, vulgar superstitions, 1 Spectator, No. 10. 2 Budgell was a kinsman of Addison, who behaved towards him with great and steady kindness. His papers in the Spectator are signed with the letter X, those in the Guardian with an asterisk. In 1733 he set up a weekly paper called The Bee; but it soon dropped. A satirical couplet in the Prologue to the Satires of Pope refers to the forgery of Dr. Tindal's will, which Budgell was believed to have been guilty of. Soon after this he committed suicide. ghosts, devotees, the shortness of life (in the famous 'Vision of Mirzah,' No. 159), and the poetical merits of Milton's Paradise Lost, in an elaborate criticism, extending over seventeen numbers, written by Addison. 46. At the end of 1715 Addison commenced writing the Freeholder, at the rate of two papers a week, and continued it till the middle of the next year. This was undertaken in the defence of the established Government; sometimes with argument, sometimes with mirth. In argument he had many equals, but his humour was singular and matchless. Bigotry itself must be delighted with the Tory fox-hunter.' 1 The daily miscellany passed by insensible degrees into inferior hands, and at last became insufferably dull. From the nature of the case, intellectual gifts are required to recommend this style, with which the novel can dispense. There are ten persons who can write a tale which people will read, for one who can compose a passable criticism, or a jeu d'esprit, or seize the fugitive traits of some popular habit, vice, or caprice. Even the importation of politics, as in the Freeholder, failed to give a permanent animation. So, after the town had been deluged for some time with small witticisms and criticisms that had no point or sap in them, the style was agreed on all hands to be a nuisance, and was discontinued. Some years later it was revived by Dr. Johnson, as we shall see. Works of Satire and Humour: Swift. 47. It will be remembered 2 that Swift's patron, Sir William Temple, took a leading part in the discussion upon the relative merits of ancient and modern authors. Swift himself struck in on the same side, in the brilliant satire of the Battle of the Books,3 which was written in 1697, but not published till 1704. In this controversy the great wits, both in France and England, were all of one mind in claiming the palm for the ancients. It was, perhaps, with some reference to it that Pope, in the Essay on Criticism, burst forth into the magnificent encomium in honour of the great poets of antiquity, beginning, Still green with bays each ancient altar stands, &c. In the reaction towards the medieval and Gothic antiquity which marked the close of the last and the beginning of the present century, this enthusiasm for Greece and Rome was much abated. At present there are symptoms of a partial revival of the feeling. 1 Johnson. 2 See p. 367. See Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 7. 48. The Tale of a Tub was also published in 1704, though written in 1696. The title is explained by Swift to mean that, as sailors throw out a tub to a whale, to keep him amused, and prevent him from running foul of their ship, so, in this treatise, his object is to afford such temporary diversion to the wits and free-thinkers of the day (who drew their arguments from the Leviathan of Hobbes) as may restrain them from injuring the State by propagating wild theories in religion and politics. The allegory of the three brothers, and the general character and tendency of this extraordinary book, will be examined in the second part of the present work.' History, 1700-1745:-Burnet, Rapin. 49. Burnet's History of His Own Times, closing with the year 1713, was published soon after his death in 1715. Burnet was a Scotchman, and a very decided Whig. Exiled by James II., he attached himself to the Prince of Orange, and was actively engaged in all the intrigues which paved the way for the Revolution. The History of His Own Times, though ill-arranged and inaccurate, is yet, owing to its contemporary character, a valuable original source of information for the period between the Restoration and 1713.2 Rapin, a French refugee, published in 1725 the best complete history of England that had as yet appeared. It was translated twice, and long remained a standard work. Dr White Kennett, who rose to be Bishop of Peterborough, was an indefatigable worker in the fields of history and archæology. His History of Ambrosden and Burcester (1695), one of the first examples of a topographical monograph, is a local investigation of rare interest and value. He wrote the third of a set of three folio volumes (1706) containing the general history of England down to 1702. In his narrative of the times of Charles II. Kennett's drift was, according to his critic Roger North, to show that that king's whole reign' was but a series of court tricks to introduce popery, tyranny, and arbitrary power.' This history was minutely criticised in a hostile spirit by Roger North (the biographer of his three brothers, Lord Guildford, Sir Dudley North, and the Rev. Dr. John North,) in a work called, Examen, or an enquiry into the credit and veracity of a Pretended Complete History (1740). North does all in his power to vindicate the memory of Charles II. and to relieve his Government from the imputations heaped upon it. John Strype, a plodding German clergyman, naturalised in England, wrote several folio volumes between 1694 and 1718, containing the Lives of the men most instrumental in the change of religion in England, 1 See Crit. Sect. ch. II. § 6. 2 Extract Book, art. 112. viz. Cranmer, Sir T. Smith, Sir John Cheke, Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift. He is also the author of Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion (1709-28), but it is a dull and confused production. Of the theology and philosophy of the period we reserve our sketch till after we have examined the progress of general literature between 1745 and 1800. Johnson. Poetry, 1745-1800:-Gray, Glover, Akenside, Young, Shenstone, Collins, Mason, Warton, Churchill, Falconer, Chatterton, Beattie, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Darwin, Walcot, Gifford, Bloomfield. 50. The grand yet grotesque figure of Samuel Johnson holds the central place among the writers of the second half of the eighteenth century. In all literary réunions he took the undisputed lead, by the power and brilliancy of his conversation, which, indeed, as recorded by Boswell, is a more valuable possession than any, or all, of his published works. His influence upon England was eminently conservative; his manly good sense, his moral courage, his wit, readiness, and force as a disputant, were all exerted to keep English society where it was, and prevent the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau from gaining ground. His success was signal. Not that there were wanting on the other side either gifted minds, or an impressible audience; Hume, Gibbon, and Priestley were sceptics of no mean order of ability; and Boswell's own example shows that, had there been no counteracting force at work, an enthusiastic admiration for Rousseau might easily have become fashionable in England. But while Johnson lived and talked, the revolutionary party could never gain that mastery in the intellectual arena, and that ascendency in society, which it had obtained in France. After his death the writings of Burke carried on the sort of conservative propaganda which he had initiated. Johnson was born at Lichfield in the year 1709. His father was a native of Derbyshire, but had settled in Lichfield as a bookseller. After having received the rudiments of a classical education at various country schools, he was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in the year 1728. His father about this time suffered heavy losses in business, in consequence of which Johnson had to struggle for many years against the deepest poverty. Nor was either his mental or bodily constitution so healthful and vigorous as to compensate for the frowns of fortune. He seems to have inherited from his 1 See Hume's Autobiography. mother's family the disease of scrofula, or the king's evil, for which he was taken up to London, at the age of three years, to be touched by Queen Anne-the ancient superstition concerning the efficacy of the royal touch not having then wholly died out. His mind was a prey during life to that most mysterious malady, hypochondria, which exhibited itself in a morbid melancholy, varying at different times in intensity, but never completely shaken off-and also in an incessant haunting fear of insanity. Under the complicated miseries of his condition, religion constantly sustained him, and deserted him not, till, at the age of seventy-five, full of years and honours, his much-tried and long-suffering soul was released. In his boyhood, he tells us, he had got into a habit of wandering about the fields on Sundays reading, instead of going to church, and the religious lessons early taught him by his mother were considerably dimmed; but at Oxford the work of that excellent man, though somewhat cloudy writer, William Law, entitled A Serious Call to a Holy Life, fell into his hands, and made so profound an impression upon him that from that time forward, though he used to lament the shortcomings in his practice, religion was ever, in the main, the actuating principle of his life. After leaving Oxford he held a situation as undermaster in a grammar-school for some months. But this was a kind of work for which he was utterly unfitted, and he was compelled to give it up. He went to Birmingham, where he obtained some trifling literary work. In 1735 he married a Mrs. Porter, a widow, and soon after, as a means of subsistence, opened a boarding-school, in which, however, he failed. He now resolved to try his fortune in London. He settled there with his wife in 1737, and supported himself for many years by writing-principally by his contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, which had been established by Cave about the year 1730, and is still carried on. His Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1747. The price stipu lated for from the booksellers was 1,5757., and the work was to be completed in three years. The Rambler, a series of papers on miscellaneous subjects, on the model of the Spectator, was commenced by him in 1750, and concluded in 1752. This and various other works, which appeared from time to time, joined to his unrivalled excellence as a talker, which made his company eagerly sought after by persons of all ranks, gradually won for Johnson a considerable reputation; and, after the accession of George III., he received, through the kindness of Lord Bute, a pension of 3007. a year. This was in 1762. He |