44 LITERATURE AND GENIUS OF THE PERIOD. CHAPTER IV. Literature and genius of the period-Prevalence of scepticism. THE same year, 1762, may be taken as a year of survey, in regard to the aspect and influences of times, circumstances, society, and literature, as well as religion. It was about twenty years after the death of Pope, forty-one from the death of Prior, forty-three from that of Addison, thirty-three from that of Steele, seventeen from that of Swift, thirty from that of Gay, thirty-six from that of Vanbrugh, and thirty-nine from that of Congreve. Arbuthnot died in 1735, Lord Bolingbroke in 1751. Some of these writers had stamped the manners and opinions of the age by their genius, and formed a taste and style then fully prevalent. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, so distinguished for the ease, wit, and beauty of her letters, died in 1762. Lord Shaftesbury had died in 1713, and the collection of his works had been published in 1716; and the powerful influence which the mingled fascination of his style and deistical opinions exerted in various directions may be learned in the autobiographies of two men as contradistinguished as Dr Franklin and John Newton, both having been brought, at an early period, under a temporary despotism beneath that nobleman's writings. LITERATURE AND GENIUS OF THE PERIOD. 45 Atterbury died in 1731, Defoe in the same year. Bishop Berkely died in 1753; Bishop Lowth, 1787; Dr Samuel Clarke, 1729; Bishop Butler, 1752; Handel, 1759; Garrick, 1779. Hannah More was born in 1745, and commenced her literary career when Cowper was writing the Olney Hymns. Among the most celebrated divines. of the period were Bishop Newton, Farmer, Lardner, Lowman, Lowth, Leland, Chandler, Warburton, Jortin, Hoadly, Wesley, Whitefield, John Newton, Soame Jenyns, Scott, Kennicott, and Cecil. The period we are contemplating was fourteen years after the death of Thomson, and thirty years since the publication of the poem of "The Seasons." It was fourteen years after the death of Watts. It was just after the publication of Young's "Night Thoughts." Blair's "Grave" had been published in 1743, the "Night Thoughts" in 1760. Yet Southey has spoken of "The Grave" as a poem written in imitation of the "Night Thoughts;" a criticism which indicates the carelessness and haste with which some other portions of his "Life of Cowper" may have been composed. Dr Johnson had published his "Dictionary" in 1754, and his "Rasselas" soon after. It was three or four years after the publication of Gray's "Odes." It was just after the publication of Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," and just before the appearance of his poem of "The Traveller." It was the year before the death of Shenstone. It was eight years after the death of Collins, the poet so nearly at one time resembling Cowper in the dread eclipse of reason under which he died, and in his inimitably exquisite poetry, coming nearer, in every line, to the perfection of Cowper 46 LITERATURE AND GENIUS OF THE PERIOD. in his most harmonious pieces, than any other poet in the English language. Chatterton, the marvellous boy that perished in his pride, was at this time ten years old, and began his sad, strange, poetical career only one year afterward. Churchill was in the brief bonfire of reputation, and had just published his "Rosciad." The admiration of his poems was like the gaze of a crowd at a display of fire-works from the top of the London Monument. Falconer had just published his "Shipwreck," and it was the year of the publication of M'Pherson's "Fingal." Edmund Burke had published his "Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful," but had not yet entered Parliament, nor began that development of his wonderful genius which afterward attracted the gaze of all Europe. Garrick and Foote were in the midst of their fame, and Sir Joshua Reynolds of his. The Johnsonian Club and circle were in the first zest of their social and literary enjoyment. It was the year after the death of Richardson, the novelist. Smollett, Fielding, Mackenzie, Horace Walpole, Mr Beckford, Mrs Inchbald, Mrs Radcliffe, Miss Burney, and some others, had opened, or were striking out, various new paths in that wilderness of fiction in which the main body of readers in our world have since been wandering, delighted and absorbed; paths that, some of them, if pursued, lead to inevitable ruin. It was three years after the publication of Robertson's "History of Scotland," and the year of the publication of the two last volumes of Hume's "History of England." Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiments" had been published in 1759. Sir William Blackstone was in the midst of his eminent reputation and service in the law; his "Commentaries were published LITERATURE AND GENIUS OF THE PERIOD. 47 in 1765. Reid's "Inquiry into the Human Understanding" was published in 1764; Lord Kames' "Elements of Criticism" in 1762. The first edition of Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" was published 1765. The first volume of Warburton's " Divine Legation" was published in 1738, the last not till 1788, after the author's death. Matthew Tindal's "Christianity as Old as the Creation" was published not long before the "Divine Legation;" and that deistical controversy arose out of it in which Dr Waterland and Dr Conyers Middleton took an important part. Middleton's "Life of Cicero " was first published about 1740; and Leland's "Deistical Writers" near the same period. Neal's "History of the Puritans" was published, the two first volumes in 1733. The fourth edition of Warburton's work was dedicated, in 1765, to Lord Mansfield, then and for many years the Lord Chief-Justice of England. Until the publication of the poem of the "Night Thoughts," there had been, for near three-quarters of a century, little intrusion of religion into what was called Polite Literature; but the world had seen the influence of a witty, licentious, and infidel literature passing into what was called religion. They had seen simplicity and nature retire before the tinsel and the blaze of art enshrined by genius, and worshipped with idolatrous devotion. Formalism had taken the place of true piety; fervour was ridiculed as fanaticism, faith despised as superstition, and superstition exalted into the place of faith. Deism and Socinianism had prevailed under the robes of the priesthood of the Church of England, and were encountered, if at all, with cold, elaborate, artificial learning, 48 PREVALENCE OF SCEPTICISM. in the shape of cumbrous Essays, of which the collection of Tracts by Watson, in five octavo volumes, is a favourable specimen. When Whitefield and Wesley began their impetuous and shining career, religion was at a low ebb indeed in the Church and among the people of England. Bishop Butler presented his " Analogy" to the Queen in 1736, and in the prefatory advertisement to that profound and powerful work he was constrained to write as follows: "It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world." And at the close of that great work he said, "If men can go on to vilify or disregard Christianity, which is to talk and act as if they had a demonstration of its falsehood, there is no reason to think they would alter their behaviour to any purpose, though there were a demonstration of its truth." There was a practical demonstration, in the outpouring of the Divine Spirit attending the preaching of Whitefield and Wesley, such as had not been witnessed since the days of Pentecost; but the demonstration itself was maligned and blasphemed by many, as the casting out of devils by Beelzebub. Cowper says himself, in one of his letters to a dear religious friend in 1767, "My religious principles are generally excepted against, and the conduct they produce, |