John Locke. 1632-1704.

4. The classic taste which produced a poet so excellent as Pope, was not without its value. But it had a worse side. It made men and literature artificial and stilted, and even false in their ideas. Nature was forgotten, and nothing but the town and society was cared for. Simple ways were scouted; what was artificial was admired. Men became slaves to rules they had set up for themselves; and one whole source of pleasure and of poetry, in the beauties of nature, was neglected. Nothing was dreaded so much as to fall into what was low or commonplace; by which was understood what was simple or homely. This—exaggerated of course by the foolish and pedantic, but to some degree affecting even the best-was the general character of the age.

IX. Reaction against the Classical or Artificial

spirit.

1. A reaction was sure to come, drawing men back from what was affected to what was natural. Many causes united to bring it; but we cannot very well limit them to any definite dates. They were long working before they produced the result.

2. First, we may, perhaps, place the writings of the philosophers, chief amongst whom stands Locke. He investigated the origin of our ideas or thoughts, traced them from their first beginnings, as they are developed in us through what we feel, or see, or hear in the course of our life, as we come to reflect upon what

is thus seen, or felt, or heard. He trusted no philosophical doctrine or theory merely on authority, but investigated everything in the light of common sense. The teaching of a man like Locke may thus have had some effect in drawing men back from an artificial into a natural way of looking at things, by forcing them to keep more steadily to what was true and real.

Humourists.

3. But another still more effective cause is to be The found in the writings of the Humourists. By the Humourists-some of whom wrote essays, others novels -we mean those authors who, by their wit and insight were able to set things that falsely claimed to be sublime in a ridiculous light, to show how much folly and absurdity there was in false pretensions, and yet how much those false pretensions were apt to run through our life, undetected by ourselves. Some of these Humourists wrote essays on the current topics of the Essayists. day, and the best representative of this kind of writing is to be found in the Spectator Essays, written almost The Spectator.' entirely by Joseph Addison, and his friend Richard 111-1712. Steele. Their essays expose folly most genially and 1672-1719. tenderly, without any bitterness of satire, except for Steele. what is vicious as well as foolish. Addison is by far the greatest; in some ways, perhaps, he was the man of greatest breadth of mind of his day. He is not free from the prevailing tendency of criticism; he tests Milton's poems, for instance, by their conformity to the rules which Aristotle laid down for an epic poem; yet he was too wise to give in to it entirely. He hates what is false and inflated: "I prefer," he says, a

Addison.

1671-1729.

Swift. 1667-1745.

Defoe.

1663-1731.

Goldsmith. 1728-1774.

noble sentiment depressed with homely language before a vulgar one that is blown up with all the sound and energy of expression."""

4. There was another style of humour which was much more grim, but had the same effect. It is that of Swift, which was fierce and contemptuous, and tore to rags all the flimsy defences of stupidity and artificiality and folly, without any thought of pity. Swift himself took the side of defending the ancient classics, on which most of the hard and fast rules of criticism were based; but this was from accident only; he really did more than almost any one to break down such rules. His prose style is great by the complete absence of what is called mannerism or affectation. It is inimitable just from its very directness and simplicity.

5. Others amongst the Humourists at a later time, did much to dispel the prevailing artificiality by novels, or fictions describing every-day life. They drew their models from nature, and followed no rules, but strove only to be true to life in their representations of the society round them. Some wrote, like Defoe, books which were fictions, but which professed at first sight to be real histories, such as the Account of the Plague, the Memoirs of a Cavalier, the Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, &c.-in all of which the peculiar excellence is the graphic way in which the minutest details are described, so as to give the whole an appearance of unadorned fact. His is the highest art, but it is the art of genius, not the art which trusts to rules. Others, like Oliver Goldsmith, take us into the simple life of the

country, and show us the homely life of the Vicar of Wakefield and his neighbours, with all their petty joys and sorrows, and all their simple follies and affectations. Goldsmith might not have allowed that he discarded rules, but what place could they have in such work, whose charm is due to its simplicity and its genius only? Others, like Henry Fielding, wrote with the Fielding. avowed object of drawing men as no better than they are; scattering to the winds anything which he believed to be sickly sentimentality, and even exaggerating his disdain of all conventional rules.

The

1707-1754.

1703-1791.

6. Another cause of the reaction must still be noticed. The artificiality which was characteristic of the age had spread into men's religious belief. influence of the Church was felt very little amongst the mass of the people. It had become little more than a political institution. But a change came over this when John Wesley began to preach, and when his Wesley. doctrine and his spirit spread rapidly over England. Men felt more deeply; their hearts were stirred, and the impulse could not fail to have its effect upon literature. A religious ardour, which came more near to that of southern Europe than any to which England ever gave birth, was sown broadcast. Evangelicalism, which was the name given to the views Wesley maintained, contributed, among other causes, to make men more true to themselves.

7. At last came a return, in poetry, to nature. Poets again sought inspiration away from the town, amid woods and hills, and in watching the changes of the

Thomson. 1699-1746.

seasons in their course.

The return was first made by James Thomson, the author of the Seasons,' whose poetry was almost all of the country. The same source Collins. (see of inspiration was cultivated by Collins and Gray:

Book V.)

1720-1756.

Gray.

1716-1771.

William Cowper. 1731-1800.

George Crabbe. 1754-1832.

their subjects are not so much drawn from nature, but where nature can help them, her help is sought. They are careful and elaborate in language-we can hardly call them in themselves "natural"—but they have sought sources of inspiration from which, more than from any other, literature was likely to learn to be natural.

8. But a new step was taken by William Cowper in his poetry. His language was more simple than that of Thomson. He did not strive to produce poems of such perfect, and almost over-wrought polish as Gray or Collins; but he was as graceful as any of them, and more fond than they of nature, of country life, of simple habits. He wrote late in life, when his judgment was mature; he was calm and thoughtful, and yet he had all a poet's passionate love for what was pure and noble. He held his religious faith very earnestly; so earnestly that it stirred him to poetry. He never sweeps us away with the impetuous force of others of our English poets; he never carries us up with him to heights of thought which the poet only can reach. But he touches something in the heart of every one: if he is not sublime, he is always true to nature. We never feel in his poems anything artificial or constrained, so as to jar upon us.

9. Another, of the same school, was George Crabbe, the "poet of the poor." His descriptions of the homely