xiv CONTENTS. The Romantic school-Its pretensions-Its tenta- tives-The two ideas of modern literature— History enters into literature-Lamb, Coleridge, Southey, Moore-Faults of this school-Why it succeeded less in England than elsewhere- studies-Aristocratic tastes-Life-Poems- Novels-Incompleteness of his historical imita- tions-Excellence of his national pictures-His interiors-Amiable raillery-Moral aim-Place in modern civilisation - Development of the novel in England-Realism and uprightness- Wherein this school is cockneyfied and English Philosophy enters into literature-Wordsworth- Character-Condition-Life-Painting of the moral life in the vulgar life-Introduction of the colourless style and psychological divisions— Faults of this kind of literature-Loftiness of Wordworth's sonnets-The Excursion-Austere beauty of this Protestant poetry- Shelley- Imprudences-Theories-Fancy-Pantheism- Ideal characters-Life-like scenery-General PAGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. BOOK III. THE CLASSIC AGE. CHAPTER II. Bryden. COMEDY has led us a long way; we must return on our 'steps and consider other kind of writings. A higher spirit moves in the midst of the great current. In the history of this talent we shall find the history of the English classical spirit, its structure, its gaps, and its powers, its formation and its development. I. The subject of the following lines is a young man, Lord Hastings, who died of smallpox at the age of nineteen : "His body was an orb, his sublime soul Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole; ... Come, learned Ptolemy, and trial make If thou this hero's altitude canst take. Blisters with pride swell'd, which through's flesh did sprout Like rose-buds, stuck i' the lily skin about. VOL. III. B Each little pimple had a tear in it, To wail the fault its rising did commit. . . No comet need foretel his change drew on Whose corpse might seem a constellation." 1 With such a pretty morsel, Dryden, the greatest poet of the classical age, makes his début. Such enormities indicate the close of a literary age. Excess of folly in poetry, as excess of injustice in political matters, lead up to and foretell revolutions., The Renaissance, unchecked and original, abandoned' the minds of men to the excitement and caprice of im-. agination, the eccentricities, curiosities, outbreaks of a fancy which only cares to content itself, breaks out into singularities, has need of novelties, and loves audacity and extravagance, as reason loves justice and truth. After the extinction of genius folly remained; after the removal of inspiration nothing was left but absurdity. Formerly disorder and internal enthusiasm produced and excused concetti and wild flights; thenceforth men threw them out in cold blood, by calculation and without excuse. Formerly they expressed the state of the mind, now they belie it. So are literary revolutions accomplished. The form, no longer original or spontaneous, but imitated and passed from hand to hand, outlives the old spirit which had created it, and is in opposition to the new spirit which destroys it. This preliminary strife and progressive transformation make up the life of Dryden, and account for his impotence and his failures, his talent and his success. 1 Dryden's Works, ed. Sir Walter Scott, 2d ed., 18 vols., 1821, xi. 94. II. Dryden's beginnings are in striking contrast with those of the poets of the Renaissance, actors, vagabonds, soldiers, who were tossed about from the first in all the contrasts and miseries of active life. He was born in 1631, of a good family; his grandfather and uncle were baronets; Sir Gilbert Pickering, his first cousin, was created a baronet by Charles the First, was a member of Parliament, chamberlain to the Protector, and one of his Peers. Dryden was brought up in an excellent school, under Dr. Busby, then in high repute; after which he passed four years at Cambridge. Having inherited by his father's death a small estate, he used his liberty and fortune only to remain in his studious ife, and continued in seclusion at the University for hree years more. These are the regular habits of an onourable and well-to-do family, the discipline of a connected and solid education, the taste for classical nd complete studies. Such circumstances announce nd prepare, not an artist, but a man of letters. I find the same inclination and the same signs in the emainder of his life, private or public. He regularly pends his mornings in writing or reading, then dines ith his family. His reading was that of a man of ulture and a critical mind, who does not think of musing or exciting himself, but who learns and judges. Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius were his avourite authors; he translated several; their names ere always on his pen; he discusses their opinions and their merits, feeding himself on that reasoning which oratorical customs had imprinted on all the works of the Roman mind. He is familiar with the new French literature, the heir of the Latin, with Corneille and Racine, Boileau, Rapin, and Bossu;1 he reasons with them, often in their spirit, writes thoughtfully, seldom fails to arrange some good theory to justify each of his) new works. He knew very well the literature of his own country, though sometimes not very accurately, gave to authors their due rank, classified the different kinds of writing, went back as far as old Chaucer, whon he translated and put into a modern dress. His mind. thus filled, he would go in the afternoon to Will's coffeehouse, the great literary rendezvous: young poets, students fresh from the University, literary dilettante crowded round his chair, carefully placed in summer." on the balcony, in winter by the fire, thinking themselves fortunate to listen to him, or to extract a pinch of snuff respectfully from his learned snuff-box. For indeed he was the monarch of taste and the umpire of letters; he criticised novelties-Racine's last tragedy Blackmore's heavy epic, Swift's first poems; slightly vain, praising his own writings, to the extent of saying that " no one had ever composed or will ever compose a finer ode" than his own Alexander's Feast; but full of information, fond of that interchange of ideas which discussion never fails to produce, capable of enduring contradiction, and admitting his adversary to be in the right. These manners show that literature had become a matter of study rather than of inspiration an employment for taste rather than for enthusiasm, a source of amusement rather than of emotion. 1 Rapin (1621-1687), a French Jesuit, a modern Latin poet and literary critic. Bossu, or properly Lebossu (1631-1680), wrote a Traité du Poème épique, which had a great success in its day. Both critics are now completely forgotten. --TR. |