English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century

est most interesting problems for the speculative historian. At the same time, if we confine ourselves to the purely literary region, it is on the whole a period of stagnation. Johnson is th

take its place. Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott were still at college, and Byron in the nursery, at the end of the pe

er dominated by the interests of the 'moneyed man,' or, as we now call them, 'capitalists.' Essentially connected with these changes is another characteristic development. Social problems were arising. The growth of the manufactory system and the accumulation of masses of town population, for example, forced attention to the problem of pauperism, and many attempts of various kinds were being made to deal with it. The same circumstances were beginning to rouse an interest in education; it had suddenly struck people that on Sundays, at least, children might be taugh

-government'; not greater vigour in the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist. He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer; his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary movement-represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic, and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the whole social order. Ins

not only gave broad surveys but suggested generalisations as to the development of institutions, which, like most generalisations, were mainly wrong, but stimulated further inquiry. Gibbon, the third of the triumvirate, uniting the power of presenting great panoramas of history with thorough scholarship and laborious research, produced the great work which has not been, if it ever can be, superseded. A growing interest in history thus led to some of the chief writings of the time, as we can see that it was the natural outgrowth of the intellectual position. The rapid widening of the historical horizon made even a bare survey useful, and led to some recognition of the importance of guiding and correcting political and social theory by careful investigation of past experience. The historian began to feel an ambition to deal in philosophical theories. He was, moreover, touched by the great scientific movement. A complete survey of the intellectual history of the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of social and political investigation. Two men especially illustrate the tendency and the particular turn which it took in England. Adam Smith's great book in 1776 applied scientific method to political economy. Smith is distinguished from his French predecessors by the historical element of his work; by his careful study, that is, of economic history, and his consequent presentation of his theory not as a body of absolute and quasi-mathematical truth, but as resting upon the experience and applicable to the concrete facts of his time. His limitation is equally characteristic. He investigated the play of

d elsewhere had uttered that sentimental deism which was to be so dear to many of his readers. Our neighbours, in short, after their characteristic fashion, were pushing logic to its consequences, and fully awake to the approach of an impending catastrophe. In Germany the movement took the philosophical and literary shape. Lessing's critical writings had heralded the change. Goethe, after giving utterance to passing phases of thought, was rising to become the embodiment of a new ideal of intellectual culture. Schiller passed through the storm and stress period and developed into the greatest national dramatist. Kant had awakened from his dogmatic theory, and the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 had awakened the philosophical world of Germany. In both countries the study of earlier English literature, of the English deists and freethinkers, of Shakespeare and of Richardson, had had great influence, and had been the occasion of new developments. But it seemed as though England had ceased to be th

the picture of the world in which Johnson was at home we should have to add from the outer sphere such types as Thrale, the prosperous brewer, and the lively Mrs. Thrale and Mrs. Montague, who kept a salon and was president of the 'Blues.' The feminine society which was beginning to write our novels was represented by Miss Burney and Hannah More; and the thriving booksellers who were beginning to become publishers, such as Strahan and the Dillys, at whose house he had the famous meeting with the reprobate Wilkes. To many of us, I suppose, an intimacy with that Johnsonian group has been a first introduction to an interest in English literature. Thanks to Boswell, we can hear its talk more distinctly than that of any later circle. When we compare it to the society of an earlier time, one or two points are conspicuous. Johnson's club was to some extent a continuation of the clubs of Queen Anne's time. But the Wits of the earlier period who met at taverns to drink with the patrons were a much smaller and more dependent body. What had since happened had been the growth of a great comfortable middle-class-meaning by middle-class the upper stratum, the professional men, the lawyers, clergymen, physicians, the merchants who had been enriched by the growth of commerce and manufactures; the country gentlemen whose rents had risen, and who could come to London and rub off their old rusticity. The aristocracy is still in possession of great wealth and political power, but beneath it has grown up an independent society which is already beginning to be the most important social stratum and the chief factor in political and social development. It has sufficient literary cultivation to admit the distinguished authors and artists who are becoming independent enough to take their pl

me a pamphlet in disguise and loses its rhetorical character. I may remark in passing that almost the only legal speeches which, so far as my knowledge goes, are still readable, were those of Erskine, who, after trying the careers of a sailor and a soldier, found the true application for his powers in oratory. Though his legal knowledge is said to have been slight, the conditions of the time enabled him in addressing a British jury to put forward a political manifesto and to display singular literary skill. Burke, however, is the typical figure. Had he been a German he might have been a Lessing, and the author of the Sublime and Beautiful might, like the author of Laokoon, have stimulated his countrymen by literary criticism. Or he might have obtained a professorship or a court preachership and, like Herder, have elaborated ideas towards the future of a philosophy of history. In England he was drawn into the political vortex, and in that capacity delivered speeches which also appeared as pamphlets, and which must rank among the great masterpieces of English literature. I need not inquire whether he lost more by giving to party what was meant for mankind, or whether his philosophy did not gain more by the necessity of constant application to the actual facts of the time. That necessity no doubt limited both the amount and the systematic completeness of his writings, though it also emphasised some of their highest merits. The English political order tended in any case to divert a great deal of literary ability into purely political channels-a peculiarity which it has not yet lost. Burke is the typical instance of this combination, and illustrates most forcibly the point to which I have already adverted. Johnson, as we know, was a mass of obstinate Tory prejudic

assical. The substance, distinguished from the style, shows the sympathy with sentimentalism of which Rousseau was to be the great exponent. Goldsmith is beginning to denounce luxury-a characteristic mark of the sentimentalist-and his regret for the period when 'every rood of earth maintained its man' is one side of the aspiration for a return to the state of nature and simplicity of manners. The inimitable Vicar recalls Sir Roger de Coverley and the gentle and delicate touch of Addison. But the Vicar is beginning to take an interest in philanthropy. He is impressed by the evils of the old prison system which had already roused Oglethorpe (who like Goldsmith-as I may notice-disputed with Johnson as to the evils of luxury) and was soon to arouse Howard. The greatest attraction of the Vicar is due to the personal charm of Goldsmith's character, but his character makes him sympathise with the wider social movements and the growth of genuine philanthropic sentiment. Goldsmith, in his remarks upon the Present State of Polite Learning (1759), explains the decay of literature (literature is always decaying) by the general enervation which accompanies learning and the want of originality caused by the growth of criticism. That was not an unnatural view at a time when the old forms are beginning to be inadequate for the new thoughts which are

for which he was partly responsible) was the German theatre of Kotzebue, which represented the intrusion of new influences and the production of a great quantity of rubbish. After Goldsmith the poetic impulse seems to have decayed entirely. After the Deserted Village (1770) no striking work appeared till Crabbe published his first volume (1781), and was followed by his senior Cowper in 1782. Both of them employed the metre of Pope, though Cowper took to blank verse; and Crabbe, though he had read and admired Spenser, was to the end of his career a thorough disciple of Pope. Johnson read and revised his Village, which was thoroughly in harmony with the old gentleman's poetic creed. Yet both Cowper and Crabbe stimulate what may be called in some sense 'a return to nature'; though not in such a way as to announce a literary revolution. Each was restrained by personal conditions. Cowper's poetical aims were profoundly affected by his religious views. The movement which we call Methodist was essentially moral and philanthropic. It agreed so far with Rousseau's sentimentalism that it denounced the corruptions of the existing order; but instead of attributing the evils to the departure from the ideal state of nature, expressed them by the theological doctrine of the corruption of the human heart. That implied in some senses a fundamental difference. But there was a close coincidence in the judgment of actual motives. Cowper fully agreed with Rousseau that our rulers had become selfish and luxurious; that war was kept up to satisfy the ambition of kings and court

maintained, but is to be revised by being brought down again to contact with solid earth. Therefore on the one hand he is thoroughly in harmony with Johnson, the embodiment of common sense, and on the other, excited the enthusiasm of Wordsworth and Scott, who, though leaders of a new movement, heartily sympathised with his realism and rejection of the old conventionalism. Though Crabbe regards Cowper's religion as fanaticism, they are so far agreed that both consider that poetry has become divorced from reality and reflects the ugly side of actual human nature. They do not propose a revolution in its methods, but to put fresh life into it by seeing things as they are. And both of them, living in the country, apply the principle to 'Nature' in the sense of scenery. Cowper gives interest to the flat meadows of the Ouse; and Crabbe, a botanist and lover of natural history, paints with unrivalled fidelity and force the flat shores and tideways of his native East Anglia. They are both therefore prophets of a love of Nature, in one of the senses of the Protean word. Cowper, who prophesied the fall of the Bastille and denounced luxury, was to some extent an unconscious ally of Rousseau, though he regarded the religious aspects of Rousseau's doctrine as shallow and unsatisfactory. Crabbe shows the attitude of which Johnson is the most characteristic example. Johnson

The historian of literature is sometimes given to speak as though it meant the revelation of a new and definite creed. He speaks, that is, like the historian of science, who accepts Darwinism as the revelation of a new principle transfusing the old conceptions, and traces the various anticipations, the seminal idea; or like the Protestant theologian who used to regard Luther as having announced the full truth dimly foreseen by Wicliff or the Albigenses. Romanticism, that is, is treated as a single movement; while the men who share traces of the taste are supposed to have not only foreseen the new doctrine but to have been the actual originators. Yet I think that all competent writers will also agree that Romanticism is a name which has been applied to a number of divergent or inconsistent schools. It seems to mean every impulse which tended to find the old clothing inadequate for the new thoughts, which caused dissatisfaction with the old philosophical and religious or political systems and aspirations, and took a corresponding variety of literary forms. It is far too complex a phenomenon to be summed up in any particular formula. The mischief is that to take the literary evolution as an isolated phenomenon is to miss an essential clue to such continuity and unity as it really possesses. When we omit the social factor, the solidarity which exists between contemporaries occupied with the same problem and sharing certain common beliefs, each school appears as an independent unit, implying a discontinuity or a simple relation of contrariety, and we explain the succession by such a verbal phrase as 'reaction.' The real problem is, what does the reaction mean? and that requires us to take into account the complex and variously composed currents of thought and reason which are seeking for literary expression. The popularity of Ossian for example, is a curious phenomenon. At the first sight we are disposed to agree with Johnson that any man could write such stuff if he would abandon his mind to it, and to add that if any one would write it no one could read it. Yet we know that Ossian appealed to the gigantic intellects of Goethe and Napol

d only made the modest and most justifiable claim that he was intrinsically superior to the Southron. He still preserved intellectual and social traditions, and cherished them the more warmly, which marked him as a distinct member of the United Kingdom. In Scotland the rapid industrial development had given fresh life to the whole society without obliterating its distinctive peculiarities. Song and ballad and local legends were still alive, and not merely objects of literary curiosity. It was under such conditions that Burns appeared, the greatest beyond compare of all the self-taught poets. Now there can be no explanation whatever of the occurrence of a man of genius at a given time and place. For anything we can say, Burns was an accident; but given the genius, his relation was clear, and the genius enabled him to recognise it with unequalled clearness. Burns became, as he has continued, the embodiment of the Scottish genius. Scottish patriotic feeling animates some of his noblest poems, and whether as an original writer-and no one could be more original-

tism implies hatred for cant, for mere foppery and sham sentimentalism; and though it uses them, insists with Crabbe upon keeping in contact with fact. We must be 'realistic,' though we can retain the old literary forms. The appeal to Nature, meanwhile, has come with Rousseau and the revolutionists to mean something different-the demand, briefly, for a thorough-going reconstruction of the whole philosophical and social fabric. To the good old Briton, Whig or Tory, that seemed to be either diabolical or mere Utopian folly. To him the British constitution is still thoroughly congenial and 'natural.' Meanwhile intellectual movement has introduced a new element. The historical sense is being developed, as a settled society with a complex organisation becomes conscious at once of its continuity and of the slow processes of growth by which it has been elaborated. The fusion of English and Scottish nations stimulates the patriotism of the smaller though better race, and generates a passionate enthusiasm for the old literature which represents the characteristic genius of the smaller community. Burns embodies the sentiment, though without any conscious reference to theories philosophical or historical. The significance was to be illustrated by Scott-an equally fervid patriot. He tells Crabbe how oddly a passage in the Village was associated in his memory with border-riding ballads and scraps of old plays. 'Nature' for Scott meant 'his honest grey hills' speaking in every fold of old traditional lore. That meant, in one sense, that Scott was not only romantic but reactionary. That was his weakness. But if he was the first to make the past alive, he was also the first to make the present historical. His masterpieces are not his descriptions of medi?val knights so much as the stories in which he illuminates the present by his vivid presentation of the present order as the outgrowth from the old, and makes the Scottish peasant or lawyer or laird interesting as a product and a type of social conditions. Nature therefore to him includes the natural processes by which society has been developed under the stress of circumstances. Nothing could be more unnatural for him than the revolutionary principle which despises tradition and regards the patriotic sentiment as superfluous and irrational. Wordsworth represents again another sense of Nature. He announced as his special principle that poetry should speak the language of Nature, and therefore, as he inferred, of the ordinary peasant and uneducated man. The hills did not speak to him of legend or history but of the sentiment of

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