INTRODUCTORY. DRYDEN's name stands like a grand land-mark at the end of the seventeenth century. His life had covered a period full of changes. Charles the I had been beheaded, Cromwell had held his stern but able rule over the nation; the "merry monarch," as Charles II was called, had kept up his dissolute revels during the fifteen years he had been King; James II, his brother, who succeeded him, had been forced to give up his crown and flee to France, and Mary, the daughter of James II, with her politic and wise husband, William of Orange, were reigning together on the throne of England when Dryden died, just in the opening year of the eighteenth century. Two years after his death, Mary's sister, Anne, became Queen. Her reign is often called as the Augustan Age of literature, a title borrowed from a period in Latin History. During the reign of the Emperor Augustus Cæsar, Latin poetry rose to its greatest height in elegance. The poets of that day worked to make the language pure and polished, and their verse perfect according to established rules. And as the Emperor Augustus was one of the patrons of literature, and it throve under his fostering care, the age has been known as the Augustan Age. And hence it is that the period in English, which is claimed to resemble this era in Roman history, received the name of the Augustan Age. 1702. You will see that the work of Dryden in poetry and criticism had been leading up to a new taste in literature. The French had always imitated the ancients, especially in their work for the stage. Form and method were in their eyes two of the most important requirements in poetry. Following them, the new school of English writers began to consider the artificial finish of a verse the great test of its merit. Dryden had made verse in his day more artificially perfect than it had ever been. The best writers among those who followed him improved upon their master. The writers of the Elizabethan age, even Shakspeare and Milton, were looked down upon as poets who did very well in their day, but did not understand the true art by which poetry was manufactured. This was the aspect of the popular taste towards poetry when Dryden died, and as he had, more than most men, set the fashion and laid down the rules for the time in which he lived, it was natural that his influence should extend into the age that followed. That he did have such an influence we shall recognize in studying the works of Pope, the greatest poet of the Augustan age. We shall notice in reading the leading writers of this new period in English literature, that many of its greatest productions in poetry and in prose are satires. Both Latin and French literature were distinguished for satirical power, but until Dryden's time English literature had not been distinguished for its satire. But with the polish of the French school, these writers began to borrow the keenness of its satire, which held up to laughter anything in art, society or politics, which the writer wanted to reform. Satires against persons, too, became common, and the poet could in this way use his talents as a means of defense against those who were unjust to him, or of revenge against those whom he disliked. Dryden's Mac Flecknoe and Pope's Dunciad, both satires against persons, are two of the most famous English works of this kind written in verse. Another marked feature of the age was the clubs, a of gathering of literary men, or politicians, or any group men of similar tastes and pursuits, at some general meetingplace where they could discuss subjects most interesting to them with more freedom than at any private house. We have seen that the wits and poets of the sixteenth century were wont to gather at the Mermaid. Ben Jonson, a little later, formed a club at the Devil Tavern, and Dryden gathered about him the most famous men of the seventeenth century at Will's Coffee-house. In the reign of Queen Anne these clubs became the rage. They were generally formed in some of the inns or eating-houses of the time, and you cannot read the history or the literature of the age without finding constant mention of them. Will's Coffeehouse continued the chief center for the men of letters, and Pope, Gay, Swift, Arbuthnot, and others, who formed the Scriblerus Club*, met there. Not far from Will's was another coffee-house known as Buttons', where Addison used to make his headquarters, and where his friends sought him out when they wanted to enjoy the charm of his society. Then there was the Kit-Kat Club, formed principally of politicians, but which included also Addison and Steele. This met at a pastry cook's shop, Christopher Kat, who was celebrated for the excellence of his mutton pies. These are two or three among the many meeting-places of the wits and public men of the day, and you can see how these gatherings must have fostered the discussions of all questions which the pens of the writers of the time took for their theme, and what a strong influence on society the clubs of the day exercised. With this glimpse into the Augustan age, we will begin our consideration of some of its chief writers-Pope, Prior and Gay in poetry; Congreve, its greatest dramatic writer; and De Foe, Swift, Addison and Steele, in prose. *This club had its name from a satire of the time, written by one of its members, John Arbuthnot, to ridicule the pedantic and false taste in literature. The satire was called "Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus." |