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Greene, Thomas Otway (1651-1685) had at least a fellowship in their vicissitudes. Like theirs, his work, too, exhibits the excesses of his life. But, painful and indelicate as are his themes, they are relieved by the most moving passages. In the portrayal of scenes of passionate emotion,' says Scott, his talents rival at least, and sometimes excel, those of Shakespeare.' And though he generally degrades the female character, he has left more than one noble portrait of a woman. Of his six tragedies and four comedies, Venice Preserved (produced 1682), which contains the character of Belvidera, and the Orphan (produced 1680), still hold the stage. Both are in blank verse, as might be expected after Dryden's renunciation of rhyme some three years previously. Thomas Southerne (1650-1746) was a more prosperous dramatist than Otway, making 7001. by one of his dramas, and far exceeded Dryden in his literary gains. 'Choice and conduct of the story,' says Hallam, 'are the chief merits' of this prolific writer. Oroonoko, 1696, and The Fatal Marriage, 1694, later known as Isabella, are the best of his plays. In the latter, the celebrated Mrs. Siddons made her first appearance on a metropolitan stage, in 1782.

77. The Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.-The plays of Dryden and Otway can scarcely be praised for their purity. But gross, and coarse even to brutality, as they occasionally are, it may be questioned whether they were more dangerous than the glittering libertinism of the group of dramatists who, with Wycherley and Congreve at their head, represent the Comedy proper of the Restoration. Marriage, with these, exists only to its dishonour, and love is the science of seduction. The one being the matter, the other the end, of most dramatic work, it may be inferred that the moral goes for little or nothing in their productions. On the contrary, intrigue, wit (they have it in profusion), repartee, and epigram are severally and collectively enlisted to popularise an inverted code of manners under which virtue is ridiculed and vice rewarded. Their plays are essentially of the class which leave a bad taste in the mouth;' and even the graceful sophistry of Charles Lamb cannot betray the reader into relegating the cynical profligacy of the Wishforts and Wildairs to some unreal land, ungoverned by ordinary laws of decency. It may be doubted whether the writers themselves would have accepted the defence. A brief enumeration of their plays will suffice.

The best of Sir George Etherege's (1636-1694) is his Man of Mode; or, Sir Fopling Flutter, 1676-'the model,' says Campbell, ' of all succeeding petits maîtres,' and, if report speak truly, a faith

ful portrait of himself, although he designed another character to that end. Two others of his plays, Love in a Tub, 1664, and She Would if She Could, 1668, were also successful. 'Gentle George,' as Dryden calls him, is said to have broken his neck by falling down stairs at Ratisbon, where he was Minister Resident. The Rehearsal of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688), has already been referred to (see p. 104, s. 74). The Mulberry Garden, 1668,-presumably the same fashionable resort where Dryden, advanced to a sword and Chedreux wig,' ate tarts with Madam Reeve, the actress-is the best known play of Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701), and it contains one of the most finished of his songs-that beginning, Ah, Chloris, could I now but sit!'

The next of this group, William Wycherley (1640–1715), was educated in France, where he became a Roman Catholic. At the Restoration, however, he returned to the Protestant religion. After being a favourite of the Duchess of Cleveland, he married the Countess of Drogheda, whom he survived long enough to contract, in his eightieth year, another alliance with a mere girl, mainly for the sake of spiting his nephew. He led the life of a wit and roué, and, toward the close of it, was greatly embarrassed—indeed, he lay for a long period in the Fleet. His last piece was produced in 1677, so that his works belong to his earlier years. They areLove in a Wood, produced 1672; the Gentleman Dancing-Master, 1673; the Country Wife, 1675, and the Plain Dealer, 1677. Calderon, Racine, and Molière-the last especially-suggested many of the scenes. At his death a worthless and indecent miscellany of prose and verse was issued under his name. It owes its slender value to the corrections of the youthful Pope, who had been the friend of its author's old age.

After being educated at the University of Dublin, and publishing a forgotten novel under the pseudonym of 'Cleophil,' the Coryphoeus of the Comic Dramatists, William Congreve (1670-1729), brought out, in 1693, his play of the Old Bachelor, followed, in 1694, by the Double Dealer, and, in 1695, by Love for Love. To these succeeded, in 1697, the tragedy of the Mourning Bride, which, in addition to the fine passage eulogised by Jonson, contains the line

'Music has charms to soothe the savage breast.'

Last came the comedy of the Way of the World, in 1704, which proved a failure. This mishap was, perhaps, a result of the vigorous onslaught made, in 1698, upon theatrical licentiousness by Jeremy

Collier (1650-1726), a non-juring Bishop, in his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Into the details of this controversy we cannot enter. The leading dramatists, however, but feebly repelled the censures of the divine; Dryden, indeed, made no important reply, and, practically, an appreciable purification of the theatre dates from the dispute. But it must be borne in mind that the mass of the public were with the clerical censor, and without this advantage on his side he would scarcely have obtained a hearing.

mer.

Congreve died a rich man from the emoluments of the places he had occupied, to the last still splendidly popular in the fashionable world. The daughter of the great Duke of Marlborough had a curious attachment for him, and to her he left the riches which, says Rumour, might more fitly, if not justly, have been bequeathed to the beautiful Mrs. Bracegirdle. The following is Macaulay's comparison of Congreve and Wycherley. He gives the palm to the forAfter touching upon the analogy in their lives and writings, he says:- 'Wycherley had wit; but the wit of Congreve far outshines that of every comic writer, except Sheridan, who has arisen within the last two centuries. Congreve had not, in a large measure, the poetical faculty; but compared with Wycherley he might be called a great poet. Wycherley had some knowledge of books; but Congreve was a man of real learning. Congreve's offences against decorum, though highly culpable, were not so gross as those of Wycherley; nor did Congreve, like Wycherley, exhibit to the world the deplorable spectacle of a licentious dotage.' *

The satire of Swift still clings to the architectural remains of Sir John Vanbrugh (1666-1726) in Blenheim and Castle Howard; but the Relapse, 1697, the Provoked Wife, 1697, the Confederacy, 1705, and the Journey to London (completed by Cibber in 1728 as the Provoked Husband), still attest his wit, as well as his immorality. George Farquhar (1678–1707) belongs more properly to the next century, as his first play only, Love in a Bottle, 1698, was produced before 1700. His best works are the Recruiting Officer, 1706, and the Beaux Stratagem, 1707. In both of these last writers the approaching improvement of the style is foreshadowed. One of the plays of Vanbrugh contains a character that Hallam has styled the first homage that the theatre had paid to female chastity since the Restoration-the character of Amanda, in the Relapse.

* Essays, 1860, ii. 175, Comic Dramatists of the Restoration.

For Aphra Behn, Crowne, Settle, Tate, and some other playwrights of this period (1625-1700) the reader is referred to the Dictionary Appendix (E).

CHAPTER VI.

THE AGE OF POPE, SWIFT, THE NOVELISTS, AND JOHNSON.

1700-1785.

78. SUMMARY OF THE PERIOD.-79. THE POETS: POPE.-80. PRIOR, GAY.-81. YOUNG, THOMSON.-82. GRAY, COLLINS.-83. CHURCHILL.-84. CHATTERTON, MACPHERSON. 85. THE MINOR POETS.-86. THE WARTONS, PERCY.

87. THE PROSE WRITERS: DEFOE.-88. SWIFT.-89. BERKELEY, ARBUTHNOT. -90. SHAFTESBURY, BOLINGBROKE, MANDEVILLE.-91. THE ESSAYISTS : ADDISON, STEELE, ETC.-92. THE NOVELISTS: RICHARDSON, FIELDING, SMOLLETT, STERNE, ETC.-93. GOLDSMITH.-94. JOHNSON.-95. BURKE.-96. THE HISTORIANS.-97. WILKES, JUNIUS.'-98. ADAM SMITH, BLACKSTONE.— 99. THE THEOLOGIANS.-100. THE DRAMATIC WRITERS.

78. Summary of the Period. In the last year of the seventeenth century Dryden died; and with his death the preceding period closed. The present chapter opens with an epoch which, owing to some not very obvious resemblance to the age of the Emperor Augustus, it was formerly customary to style the 'golden' or 'Augustan Age' of English literature. That this resemblance did not lie in the protection of letters by royal or noble patrons; that it was not based upon any special elevation in the character of the works producedwhich, on the contrary, were generally more or less identified with the interests of opposing Whig and Tory; that the time, in short, was not great by comparison with the periods that preceded and followed it—are facts now fairly established. To the question, In what, then, does the likeness consist?-it has been answered:- In the correctness or finish of style achieved by the leading writers. Yet, although it is allowed that a new attention to the mechanism of literary expression-a striving after perspicuity and brevity in style is traceable as far back as the Restoration, even this attribute of correctness' has been contested. It has been urged that the writings of Pope, of Addison, of Swift even, are not 'correct' in any exact sense of the word; and that, supposing this particular property were conceded to the writings of one or two of the authors who lived under Queen Anne and George I., they would not, numeri

cally, suffice to constitute a literary age. It may, therefore, be held that the title Augustan,' as applied to the era in question, has now passed into the category of time-honoured misnomers.

*

The foregoing remarks apply to the earlier years only of the period comprised in the present chapter. But, during the whole of the time (1700-1785), no 'great' poet can be said to have appeared. Pope, who stands first, and, it must be added, at an elevation far above that of his contemporaries, has, notwithstanding, been denied a place in the highest order of poets. Yet, in his own province, his ability was unquestioned. His poetry was 'the apotheosis of clearness, point, and technical skill; of the ease that comes of practice, not of the fulness of original power.' As a metrical artist, he stands supreme among his fellows, and his influence over the fashion of verse-writing is distinguishable for at least forty years after his death. Nevertheless, there were not wanting indications of the advent of a truer and more genuine school of poetry. In the blank verse of Thomson's Seasons, in the Odes of Collins and the Odes and Elegy of Gray, in the Traveller and Deserted Village of Goldsmith, nay, in the very forgeries of Macpherson and Chatterton, and the popularity of Bishop Percy's Reliques, there were manifest signs, even in those days of apparent poetical sterility, that a reaction from the mechanic art' and 'musical finesse' of the popular Popesque manner from 'drawing-room pastoral' and the poetry of the town '—was gradually approaching, and that there was a growing and irrepressible impulse toward the poetry of nature and human life.t

6

In the absence of poetry of the highest order, prose, on the other hand, exhibited an extraordinary development. With the Tatler and Spectator of Steele and Addison began that popular form of essaywriting which still survives and flourishes; while the class of fiction adopted by Swift and Defoe reached, in the minute characterpainting of Richardson, the vivid delineation of life and manners by Smollett and Fielding, the whimsical, super-subtle analysis of Sterne, and the idyllic grace of Goldsmith, a degree of excellence which, it may fairly be asserted, the modern British novelist has never yet attained. Nor was it in fiction alone that the opulence of prose was apparent. The history of Hume, Robertson, Gibbon; the theology of Berkeley and of Butler; the political economy of Adam Smith, the rhetoric of Burke, and the invective of Junius,' all found

* Lowell, My Study Windows: Pope.

tv. Introductory Memoir to Ward's Pope, 1869 (Globe Ed.); English Poetry from Dryden to Cowper, Quarterly Review, July, 1862 [by F. T. Palgrave].

I