English Poets of the Eighteenth Century - Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
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The straight-backed measure with the stately stride.
Thus in form as in substance the poetry of the period voiced the mood,
not of carefree youth, nor yet of vehement early manhood, but of still
vigorous middle age,--a phase of existence perhaps less ingratiating than
others, but one which has its rightful hour in the life of the race as of
the individual. The sincere and artistic expression of its feelings will
be denied poetical validity only by those whose capacity for appreciating
the varieties of poetry is limited by their lack of experience or by
narrowness of sympathetic imagination.
II. ORTHODOXY AND CLASSICISM ASSAILED (1726-1750)
During the second quarter of the century, Pope and his group remained
dominant in the realm of poetry; but their mood was no longer pacific.
Their work showed a growing seriousness and acerbity. Partly the change
was owing to disappointment: life had not become so highly cultured,
literature had not prospered so much, nor displayed so broad a diffusion
of intelligence and taste, as had been expected. Pope's _Dunciad, Epistle
to Dr. Arbuthnot_, and ironic satire on the state of literature under
"Augustus" (George II, the "snuffy old drone from the German hive"),
brilliantly express this indignation with the intellectual and literary
shortcomings of the times.
A cause of the change of mood which was to be of more lasting consequence
than the failure of the age to put the traditional ideal more generally
into practice, was the appearance of a distinctly new ideal,--one which
undermined the very foundations of the old. This new spirit may be termed
sentimentalism. In prose literature it had already been stirring for
about twenty-five years, changing the tone of comedy, entering into some
of the periodical essays, and assuming a philosophic character in the
works of Lord Shaftesbury. Its chief doctrines, rhapsodically promulgated
by this amiable and original enthusiast, were that the universe and all
its creatures constitute a perfect harmony; and that Man, owing to his
innate moral and aesthetic sense, needs no supernatural revelation of
religious or ethical truth, because if he will discard the prejudices
of tradition, he will instinctively, when face to face with Nature,
recognize the Spirit which dwells therein,--and, correspondingly, when
in the presence of a good deed he will recognize its morality. In other
words. God and Nature are one; and Man is instinctively good, his
cardinal virtue being the love of humanity, his true religion the love of
Nature. Be therefore of good cheer: evil merely appears to exist, sin is
a figment of false psychology; lead mankind to return to the natural, and
they will find happiness.
The poetical possibilities of sentimentalism were not grasped by any
noteworthy poet before Thomson. _The Seasons_ was an innovation, and
its novelty lay not so much in the choice of the subject as in the
interpretation. Didactic as well as descriptive, it was designed not
merely to present realistic pictures but to arouse certain explicitly
stated thoughts and feelings. Thomson had absorbed some of Shaftesbury's
ideas. Such sketches as that of the hardships which country folk suffer
in winter, contrasted with the thoughtless gayety of city revelers,
and inculcating the lesson of sympathy, are precisely in the vein that
sentimentalism encouraged. So, too, the tendency of Shaftesbury to deify
Nature appears in several ardent passages. The choice of blank verse
as the medium of this liberal and expansive train of thought was
appropriate. It should not be supposed, however, that Thomson accepted
sentimentalism in its entirety or fully understood its ultimate bearings.
The author of _Rule, Britannia_ praised many things,--like commerce
and industry and imperial power,--that are not favored by the thorough
sentimentalist. Often he was inconsistent: his _Hymn to Nature_ is
in part a pantheistic rhapsody, in part a monotheistic Hebrew psalm.
Essentially an indolent though receptive mind, he made no effort to trace
the new ideas to their consequences; he vaguely considered them not
irreconcilable with the old.
A keener mind fell into the same error. Pope, in the _Essay on Man_,
tried to harmonize the orthodox conception of human character with
sentimental optimism. As a collection of those memorable half-truths
called aphorisms, the poem is admirable; as an attempt to unite new
half-truths with old into a consistent scheme of life, it is fallacious.
No creature composed of such warring elements as Pope describes in the
superb antitheses that open Epistle II, can ever become in this world as
good and at the same time as happy as Epistle IV vainly asserts. Pope,
charged with heresy, did not repeat this endeavor to console mankind; he
returned to his proper element, satire. But his effort to unite the
new philosophy with the old psychology is striking evidence of the
attractiveness and growing vogue of Shaftesbury's theories.
It was minor poets who first expressed sentimental ideas without
inconsistency. As early as 1732, anonymous lines in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ advanced what must have seemed the outrageously paradoxical
thought that the savage in the wilderness was happier than civilized
man. Two years later Soame Jenyns openly assailed in verse the orthodox
doctrines of sin and retribution. These had long been assailed in prose;
and under the influence of the attacks, within the pale of the Church
itself, some ministers had suppressed or modified the sterner aspects of
the creed,--a movement which Young's satires had ridiculed in the person
of a lady of fashion who gladly entertained the notion that the Deity
was too well-bred to call a lady to account for her offenses. Jenyns
versified this effeminization of Christianity, charged orthodoxy with
attributing cruelty to God, and asserted that faith in divine and human
kindness would banish all wrong and discord from the world. In 1735 a far
more important poet of sentimentalism arose in Henry Brooke, an
undeservedly neglected pioneer, who, likewise drawing his inspiration
from Shaftesbury, developed its theories with unusual consistency and
fullness. His _Universal Beauty_ voiced his sense of the divine immanence
in every part of the cosmos, and emphasized the doctrine that animals,
because they unhesitatingly follow the promptings of Nature, are more
lovely, happy, and moral than Man, who should learn from them the
individual and social virtues, abandon artificial civilization, and
follow instinct. Brooke, in the prologue of his _Gustavus Vasa_, shows
that he foresaw the political bearings of this theory; it is, in his
opinion, peculiarly a people "guiltless of courts, untainted, and unread"
that, illumined by Nature, understands and upholds freedom: but this was
a thought too advanced to be general at this time even among Brooke's
fellow-sentimentalists.
Though sentimental literature bore the seeds of revolution, its earliest
effect upon its devotees was to create, through flattery of human
character, a feeling of good-natured complacency. Against this optimism
the traditional school reacted in two ways,--derisive and hortatory.
Pope, Young, and Swift satirized with masterful skill the inherent
weaknesses and follies of mankind, the vigor of their strokes drawing
from the sentimentalist Whitehead the feeble but significant protest,
_On Ridicule_, deprecating satire as discouraging to benevolence. On the
other hand, Wesley's hymns fervently summoned to repentance and piety;
while Young's _Night Thoughts_, yielding to the new influence only in its
form (blank verse), reasserted the hollowness of earthly existence,
the justice of God's stern will, and the need of faith in heavenly
immortality as the only adequate satisfaction of the spiritual elements
in Man. The literary powers of Pope, Swift, and Young were far superior
to those of the opposed school, which might have been overborne had not a
second generation of sentimentalists arisen to voice its claims in a more
poetical manner.
These newcomers,--Akenside, J.G. Cooper, the Wartons, and Collins,--all
of them very young, appeared between 1744 and 1747; and each rendered
distinct service to their common cause. The least original of the group,
John Gilbert Cooper, versified in _The Power of Harmony_ Shaftesbury's
cosmogony. More independently, Mark Akenside developed out of the same
doctrine of universal harmony the theory of aesthetics that was to guide
the school,--the theory that the true poet is created not by culture and
discipline at all, but owes to the impress of Nature--that beauty which
is goodness--his imagination, his taste, and his moral vision. Though
comparatively ardent and free in manner, Akenside pursued the customary,
didactic method. Less abstract, more nearly an utterance of personal
feeling, was Joseph Warton's _Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature_,
historically a remarkable poem, which, through its expression of the
author's tastes and preferences, indicated briefly some of the most
important touchstones of the sentimentalism (_videlicet_, "romanticism")
of the future. Warton found odious such things as artificial gardens,
commercial interests, social and legal conventions, and a formal
Addisonian style; he yearned for mountainous wilds, unspoiled savages,
solitudes where the voice of Wisdom was heard above the storms, and
poetry that was "wildly warbled." His younger brother Thomas, who wrote
_The Pleasures of Melancholy_, and sonnets showing an interest in
non-classical antiquities, likewise felt the need of new literary gods to
sanction the practices of their school: Pope and Dryden were accordingly
dethroned; Spenser, Shakespeare, and the young Milton, all of whom were
believed to warble wildly, were invoked.
William Collins was the most gifted of this band of enthusiasts. His
general views were theirs: poetry is in his mind associated with wonder
and ecstacy; and it finds its true themes, as the _Ode on Popular
Superstitions_ shows, in the weird legends, the pathetic mischances, and
the blameless manners of a simple-minded folk remote from cities. Unlike
his fellows, Collins had moments of great lyric power, and gave posterity
a few treasured poems. His further distinction is that he desired really
to create that poetical world about which Akenside theorized and for
which the Wartons yearned. Unhappily, however, he too often peopled it
with allegorical figures who move in a hazy atmosphere; and his melody is
then more apparent than his meaning.
The hopeful spirit of these enthusiasts found little encouragement in the
poems with which the period closed,--Gray's _Ode on Eton_ and _Hymn to
Adversity_, and Johnson's _Vanity of Human Wishes_.
Some bold adventurers disdain
The limits of their little reign,
wrote Gray, adding with the wisdom of disillusion,
Gay hopes are theirs, by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possessed.
He was speaking of schoolboys whose ignorance is bliss; but the general
tenor of his mind allows us to surmise that he also smiled pityingly upon
some of the aspirations of the youthful sentimentalists. Dr. Johnson's
hostility to them was, of course, outspoken. He laughed uproariously at
their ecstatic manner, and ridiculed the cant of sensibility; and in
solemn mood he struck in _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ another blow at the
heresy of optimism. In style the contrast between these poems and those
of the Wartons and Collins is marked. Heirs of the Augustans, Johnson and
Gray have perfect control over their respective diction and metres: here
are no obscurities or false notes; Johnson sustains with superb
dignity the tone of moral grandeur; Gray is ever felicitous. Up to the
mid-century then, despite assailants, the classical school held its
supremacy; for its literary art was incomparably more skillful than that
of its enemies.
III. THE PROGRESS OF SENTIMENTALISM
(1751-1775)
During the 1750's sentimental poetry did not fulfill the expectations
which the outburst of 1744 had seemed to promise. It sank to lower
levels, and its productions are noteworthy only as signs of the times and
presages of the future. Richard Jago wrote some bald verses intended to
foster opposition to hunting, and love for the lower animals,--according
to the sentimental view really the "little brothers" of Man. John
Dalton's crude _Descriptive Poem_ apostrophized what was regarded as the
"savage grandeur" of the Lake country; it is interesting only because it
mentions Keswick, Borrowdale, Lodore, and Skiddaw, half a century
later to become sacred ground. The practical dilemma of the
sentimentalist,--drawn toward solitude by his worship of Nature, and
toward society by his love for Man,--was described by Whitehead in _The
Enthusiast_, the humanitarian impulse being finally given the preference.
Though the last of these pieces is not contemptible in style, none
of these writers had sufficient ardor to compel attention; and if
sentimentalism had not been steadily disseminated through other literary
forms, especially the novel, it might well have been regarded as a lost
cause.
The great poet of this decade was Gray, whose _Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard_, by many held the noblest English lyric, appeared in 1751.
His classical ideal of style, according to which poetry should have,
in his words, "extreme conciseness of expression," yet be "pure,
perspicuous, and musical," was realized both in the _Elegy_ and in the
otherwise very different _Pindaric Odes_. The ethical and religious
implications of the _Elegy_, its piety, its sense of the frailties as
well as the merits of mankind, are conservative. Nor is there in the
_Pindaric Odes_ any violation of classical principles. Gray never
deviates into a pantheistic faith, a belief in human perfection, a
conception of poetry as instinctive imagination unrestrained, or any
other essential tenet of sentimentalism. Yet the influence of the new
spirit upon him may be discerned. It modified his choice of subjects, and
slightly colored their interpretation, without causing him to abandon the
classical attitude. The _Elegy_ treats with reverence what the Augustans
had neglected,--the tragic dignity of obscure lives; _The Progress of
Poesy_ emphasizes qualities (emotion and sublimity) which the _Essay on
Criticism_ had not stressed; and _The Bard_ presents a wildly picturesque
figure of ancient days. Gray felt that classicism might quicken its
spirit and widen its interests without surrendering its principles, that
a classical poem might be a popular poem; and the admiration of posterity
supports his belief.
An astounding and epochal event was the publication (1760 ff.) of
the poems attributed to Ossian. Their "editor and translator," James
Macpherson, author of a forgotten sentimental epic, alleged that Ossian
was a Gaelic poet of the third century A.D., who sang the loves and wars
of the heroes of his people, brave warriors fighting the imperial legions
of Rome; and that his poems had been orally transmitted until now,
fifteen centuries later, they had been taken down from the lips of Scotch
peasants. It was a fabrication as ingenious as brazen. As a matter of
fact, Macpherson had found only an insignificant portion of his extensive
work in popular ballads; and what little he had found he had expanded and
changed out of all semblance to genuine ancient legend. Both the
guiding motive of his prose-poem (it is his as truly as _King Lear_
is Shakespeare's), and the furore of welcome which greeted it, may be
understood by recalling the position of the sentimental school on the eve
of its appearance. The sentimentalists were maintaining that civilization
had corrupted tastes, morals, and poetry, that it had perverted Man from
his instinctive goodness, and that only by a return to communion with
Nature could humanity and poetry be redeemed. But all this was based
merely on philosophic theory, and could find no confirmation in history
or literature: history knew of no innocent savages; and even as
unsophisticated literature as Homer was then supposed to be, disclosed no
heroes perfect in the sentimental virtues.
_Ossian_ appeared; and the truth of sentimentalism seemed historically
established. For here was poetry of the loftiest tone, composed in the
unlearned Dark Ages, and answering the highest expectations concerning
poetry inspired by Nature only. (Was not a distinguished Professor of
Rhetoric saying, "Ossian's poetry, more perhaps than that of any other
writer, deserves to be styled the poetry of the heart"?) And here was
the record of a nature-people whose conduct stood revealed as flawless.
"Fingal," Macpherson himself accommodatingly pointed out, "exercised
every manly virtue in Caledonia while Heliogabalus disgraced human nature
in Rome." More than fifty years afterwards Byron compared Homer's Hector,
greatly to his disadvantage, with Ossian's Fingal: the latter's conduct
was, in his admirer's words, "uniformly illustrious and great, without
one mean or inhuman action to tarnish the splendor of his fame." The
benevolent magnanimity of the heroes, the sweet sensibility of the
heroines, their harmony with Nature's moods (traits which Macpherson had
supplied from his own imagination), were the very traits that won
the enthusiasm of the public. The poem in its turn stimulated the
sentimentalism which had produced it; and henceforth the new school
contended on even terms with the old.
One of the effects of the progress of sentimentalism was the decline of
satire. Peculiarly the weapon of the classical school, it had fallen into
unskillful hands: Churchill, though keen and bold, lacked the grace of
Pope and the power of Johnson. Goldsmith might have proved a worthier
successor; but though his genius for style was large, his capacity for
sustained indignation was limited. Even his _Retaliation_ is humorous in
spirit rather than satiric. He was a being of conflicting impulses; and
in his case at least, the style is not precisely the man. His temperament
was emotional and affectionate; by nature he was a sentimentalist. But
his inclinations were restrained, partly by the personal influence of Dr.
Johnson, partly by his own admiration for the artistic traditions of
the classicists. He despised looseness of style, considered blank verse
unfinished, and cultivated what seemed to him the more polished elegance
of the heroic couplet. The vacillation of his views appears in the
difference between the sentiments of _The Traveller_ and those of _The
Deserted Village_. The former is a survey of the nations of Europe, the
object being to discover a people wholly admirable. Merit is found in
Italians, Swiss, French, Dutch, and English,--but never perfection; even
the free and happy Swiss are disgusting in the vulgar sensuality of their
pleasures; happiness is nowhere. One is not surprised to learn that Dr.
Johnson contributed at least a few lines to a poem with so orthodox a
message.
In _The Deserted Village_, on the other hand, Goldsmith employed the
classical graces to point a moral which from the classical point of view
was false. His sympathetic feelings had now been captivated by the notion
of rural innocence. The traits of character which he attributed to the
village inhabitants,--notably to the immortal preacher who, entertaining
the vagrants,
Quite forgot their vices in their woe,--
are those exalted in the literature of sentimentalism, as, for example,
in his contemporary, Langhorne's _Country Justice_. _The Deserted
Village_ was in point of fact an imaginative idyll,--the supreme idyll of
English poetry; but Goldsmith insisted that it was a realistic record
of actual conditions. Yet he could never have observed such an English
village, either in its depopulated and decayed state (as Macaulay has
remarked), or in its rosy prosperity and unsullied virtue; his economic
history and theory were misleading. Like Macpherson, but through
self-delusion rather than intent, he was engaged in an effort to deceive
by giving sentimental doctrines a basis of apparent actuality. But the
world has forgotten or forgiven his pious fraud in its gratitude for the
loveliness of his art.
IV. THE TRIUMPH OF SENTIMENTALISM (1776-1800)
Goldsmith's application of sentimental ideas to contemporary affairs
foreshadowed what was to be one of the marked tendencies of the movement
in the last quarter of the century. Thus in 1777 Thomas Day interpreted
the American Revolution as a conflict between the pitiless tyranny of a
corrupt civilization and the appealing virtues of a people who had found
in sequestered forests and prairies the abiding place of Freedom and the
only remaining opportunity "to save the ruins of the human name." At the
same time the justification of sentimentalism on historical grounds was
strengthened by the young antiquarian and poet, Thomas Chatterton. Like
Macpherson, he answers to Pope's description of archaizing authors,--
Ancients in words, mere moderns in their sense.
He fabricated, in what he thought to be Middle English, a body of songs
and interludes, which he attributed to a monk named Thomas Rowleie,
and which showed that, in the supposedly unsophisticated simplicity of
medieval times, charity to Man and love for Nature had flourished as
beautifully as lyric utterance. Even more lamentable than Chatterton's
early death is the fact that his fanciful and musical genius was shrouded
in so grotesque a style.
In 1781 appeared a new poet of real distinction, George Crabbe, now the
hope of the conservatives. Edmund Burke, who early in his great career
had assailed the radicals in his ironic _Vindication of Natural Society_,
and who to the end of his life contended against them in the arena of
politics, on reading some of Crabbe's manuscripts, rescued this cultured
and ingenuous man from obscurity and distress; and Dr. Johnson presently
aided him in his literary labors. In _The Library_ Crabbe expressed the
reverence of a scholarly soul for the garnered wisdom of the past, and
satirized some of the popular writings of the day, including sentimental
fiction. He would not have denied the world those consolations which flow
from the literature that mirrors our hopes and dreams; but his honest
spirit revolted when such literature professed to be true to life.
His acquaintance with actual conditions in humble circles, and with
hardships, was as personal as Goldsmith's; but he was not the kind of
poet who soothes the miseries of mankind by ignoring them. In _The
Village_ he arose with all the vigor and intensity of insulted common
sense to refute the dreamers who offered a rose-colored picture of
country life as a genuine portrayal of truth and nature. So evident
was his mastery of his subject, his clearness of perception, and his
earnestness of feeling, that he attracted immediate attention; and he
might well have led a new advance under the ancient standards. But
silence fell upon Crabbe for many years; and this proved, to be the last
occasion in the poetical history of the century that a powerful voice was
raised in behalf of the old cause.
The poet who became the favorite of moderate sentimentalists, in what
were called "genteel" circles, was William Cowper. He presented little
or nothing that could affright the gentle emotions, and much that
pleasurably stimulated them. He enriched the poetry of the domestic
affections, and had a vein of sadness which occasionally, as in _To
Mary_, deepened into the most touching pathos. In _The Task_, a
discursive familiar essay in smooth-flowing blank verse, he dwelt fondly
upon those satisfactions which his life of uneventful retirement offered;
intimated that truth and wisdom were less surely found by poring upon
books than by meditating among beloved rural scenes; and, turning his sad
gaze toward the distant world of action, deplored that mankind strained
"the natural bond of brotherhood" by tolerating cruel imprisonments,
slavery, and warfare. Such humanitarian views, when they seek the aid of
religious ethics, ought normally to find support in that sentimentalized
Christianity which professes the entire goodness of the human heart;
but the discordant element in Cowper's mind was his inclination towards
Calvinism, which goes to the opposite extreme by insisting on total
depravity. Personally he believed that he had committed the unpardonable
sin (against the Holy Spirit),--a dreadful thought which underlies
his tragic poem, _The Castaway_; and probably unwholesome, though
well-intentioned, was the influence upon him of his spiritual adviser,
John Newton, whose gloomy theology may be seen in the hymn, _The Vision
of Life in Death_. Cowper's sense of the reality of evil not only
distracted his mind to madness, but also prevented him from carrying his
sentimental principles to their logical goal. What the hour demanded were
poets who, discountenancing any mistrust of the natural emotions, should
give them free rein. They were found at last in Burns and in Blake.