supersensitive, he was barred from that active participation in public affairs in which so many eighteenth century men of letters engaged. His education he obtained at home, largely through wide if random reading. The first public exhibition of his skill in numbers was given in the Pastorals, printed in 1709, but written, he said, when he was sixteen. The Essay on Criticism (1711) was praised by Addison in The Spectator, and won for the young poet a reputation which became fame on the appearance of The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714.) His literary position secure, Pope undertook a verse translation of Homer: the Iliad was finished in 1720, the Odyssey in 1725, and the income made Pope independent. He bought a villa at Twickenham, and took an almost childish pleasure in developing the grounds according to the sham classic taste of the day. An edition of Shakespeare which Pope issued in 1725 was speedily shown to be full of errors. The adverse criticism added to an already long list of literary enemies whom Pope had made; he took revenge on his critics and heaped scorn on a large number of insignificant writers in the famous satire The Dunciad. The history of the composition of this poem, and of the changes made in it during successive editions from 1728 to 1743, is one of the most curious in the whole range of literature. The later years of his life were divided between lampooning his enemies in polished attacks, often harsh and false, such as the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), and writing pseudo-philosophical poems like the Essay on Man (1732-35), which sets forth the deistic theories of Pope's friend Bolingbroke.

There is little in Pope's character to admire except a firm devotion to literature and an iron resolution which compelled success despite the physical weakness. He was treacherous, malicious, his word was unreliable, his vanity and resentment of criticism were excessive. His poetry, once lauded as all that verse should be, is now generally relegated to the second class, though admittedly at the head of that class. It is the complete epitome of the failings and excellences of the classical school. It has no moral elevation, no loftiness of thought, no feeling for humanity or nature, no passion except the passion of personal animosity. But it is marvellously finished, clear as crystal, neat and pointed as no other English poetry has been. Pope is the absolute and ultimate master of the heroic couplet; for metrical perfection and epigrammatic brilliance his couplets are without rival.

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed":

this couplet is at once a definition and an illustration of Pope's theory and practice. As a satirist Pope ranks with the greatest. He does not compete with Dryden in the field of political satire; he does not attack mankind in general like Swift. Against the foibles of society he directs the wonderfully clever Rape of the Lock; but he is at his best-and is most merciless-in personal satire,

when he launches a polished dart, keen and poisoned, against some real or fancied enemy.

The standard edition is that by Elwin and Courthope (10 vols., John Murray). The best single volume edition is the Globe (Macmillan). The best biography is Leslie Stephen's (E. M. L.).

GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor parson. In the University of Dublin he failed to distinguish himself, and when after graduation he undertook to enter one of the professions, he was for some time unsuccessful. A brief experience in Edinburgh, where he was studying medicine, was followed by three years of wandering about on the continent. Just what he did during these years it is hard to tell; when he returned to England in 1756 he claimed to have graduated in medicine at the University of Leyden; probably part of George Primrose's story, in the Vicar, is a retelling of Goldsmith's own experiences. Unsuccessful as a physician, Goldsmith soon was doing literary hack work for any bookseller who would employ him. The first thing to bring him any real reputation was his series of essays The Citizen of the World (1762). In 1763 he became one of the original nine members of The Club, and was thus a personal friend of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. In 1764 appeared The Traveller, a poem reminiscent in part of his own experiences, and hailed as the best work since Pope. Two years later came The Vicar of Wakefield, and in 1768 the first of his two plays, The Good-Natured Man. In 1770 The Deserted Village enhanced his reputation as a poet; in 1773 She Stoops to Conquer had a deserved success on the stage. The next year Goldsmith died. His warm good nature, his prodigality, his petty vanities and his large unselfishness, his fine independence and his helplessness, are all brought out in Boswell's Life of Johnson. He was a man whom everybody loved; when he died Johnson said: "Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."

As a man of letters Goldsmith was great in part at least because of his versatility, for he was essayist, poet, novelist, and dramatist. But his versatility was not that of the mediocre hack. Between Addison and Lamb it is hard to find better essays than Goldsmith's. His verse, especially The Deserted Village, though written in Popeian couplets, has a freshness and sweetness that are still delightful. His dramas were clean and pure, and "fulfilled the great end of comedy, making an audience laugh." And The Vicar, despite the poor plot, is a novel which many generations have loved for its superb characterization of the central figure, and its genial portrayal of domestic manners.

The best contemporary source of information about Goldsmith is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Black's life, in the E. M. L., and Dobson's in the Great Writers series, are good brief biographies. The plays, poems, and the Vicar, have been many times reprinted; a good reprint of the Essays is that edited by Aikin and Tuckerman

(Crowell). Macaulay's Essay is reprinted in this volume.

JOHNSON (1709-1784)

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, the son of a poor bookseller. As a child he was sickly; the scrofula, for which he was "touched" by Queen Anne, left permanent traces upon his body and his habits. With some financial assistance Johnson managed to get to Pembroke College, Oxford, but poverty compelled him to leave in 1731 before he had obtained a degree. Oxford later honored herself by making him a Master of Arts and finally a Doctor of Laws. After struggling along for some time at teaching and hack writing Johnson married, and with the money brought him by his wife tried to start a private school. The venture failed. Johnson then abandoned Lichfield, and in 1737 tramped up to London with a companion as impoverished as himself, young David Garrick, destined to become the greatest actor of his time. Arrived in London, Johnson was speedily submerged in the wretched life of a hack writer. He attracted a little attention with a satirical poem London (1738), more with the more deserving Vanity of Human Wishes (1749). He tried twice to launch a periodical of the Spectator type; The Rambler (1750-52) and The Idler (1758-60) were too heavy to be more than moderately successful. The greatest work of these treadmill years was the famous Dictionary, published in 1755, which made Johnson's reputation and won for him his title of "the Great Lexicographer." It is the least impersonal of all such books, and bristles with definitions illustrating Johnson's eccentricities and prejudices. In 1759 Johnson was still so poor that when his mother died he defrayed the expenses of her funeral by writing in the evenings of a single week his moral prose romance Rasselas; 1762 brought relief, however, when Johnson was granted a pension of three hundred pounds, and thenceforth he was never again in want. The Club, one of the most famous of all literary fellowships, was organized in 1764; it had as members the most brilliant men of their day-Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, and others--but Johnson outshone them all, and over the Club, as over the world of letters, ruled as dictator. The chief work of Johnson's later years was done in his edition of Shakespeare (1765), still valuable for the sound common sense of its notes, and the Lives of the English Poets (1779-81), a series of short biographies prepared to accompany a standard edition of the poets from Cowley to Gray. In 1773 he made a trip with Boswell through Scotland and the Hebrides, an odd expedition for an inactive man of sixty-four, who loved London and despised Scotland with almost equal fervor; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland records his impressions. He died in his house in Fleet Street in 1784, and was buried in the Abbey.

Johnson was the last great representative of the classical school, and by his influence doubtless held off for some time the impending literary

revolution. As a writer he is seen at his best in The Lives of the Poets. The taste of his time and his personal limitations kept him from a due appreciation of the work of certain men, notably Milton and Gray, but in general his judgments are fair and his comparisons enlightening; his estimates of Dryden, Addison, and Pope are classics. As a talker Johnson was supreme: his conversation, so faithfully set down by Boswell, was simpler and more brilliant than his writing, not so laden with the ponderous Latinisms which we think of as characteristically "Johnsonese," though it should be added that his later writings are not so pompous in style as the earlier. The man Johnson was greater than his works. No famous man had more or odder peculiarities, but these were mere externals. His massive common sense, his real tenderness of heart, his generosity, his sincere piety, his transparent honesty, endear his memory. Macaulay, writing in 1856, concludes thus: "The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons, and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and his temper, serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a good man."

There is a good volume of selections from Johnson's writings in the Little Masterpieces, edited by Bliss Perry (Doubleday Page and Co.). The best edition of the Lives of the Poets is that by Birkbeck Hill (Clarendon Press). The essays by Macaulay and Carlyle, inspired by Croker's edition of Boswell's Life, should be known to all students of Johnson.

BOSWELL (1740-1795)

James Boswell made himself famous by spreading Johnson's fame. He was the son of a Scotch lawyer of high standing, and went to the University of Edinburgh, afterward studying law, and practicing in Edinburgh and London. The year 1763 made Boswell's fortune, for then he visited London and made the acquaintance of Johnson. For twenty years he enjoyed the intimate friendship of the great man, who secured his admission to The Club. Though he was vain to excess, a snob imperturbably impudent on occasion, Boswell was not the fool he has sometimes been made out to be. He had wit enough to recognize a great man when he saw one, and sense enough to make the most of his opportunities. The accuracy of observation, the liveliness, the veracity, the thorough humanness of his Life of Johnson, published in 1791, make it the best biography ever written.

The definitive edition of Boswell's Life is by Birkbeck Hill (6 vols., Clarendon Press). The Everyman Library contains a complete edition in two volumes.

BURKE (1729-1797)

Edmund Burke was born in 1729, at Dublin. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1748, and soon took up the study of law in the Middle Temple, London. His interest in literature developed early in life; in 1756 the Inquiry concerning the Sublime and the Beautiful marked his appearance on the stage of letters. Five years later he was appointed secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland; from this time until his death he was actively engaged in governmental work. His political career was of the noblest; although never holding a high office, he was recognized as the unofficial leader of the Whig party, and virtually shaped the policies of the nation during the latter part of his life. From 1790 to 1797 he was concerned with France; his first great interests, however, had been America and India. He had entered Parliament in 1766, and had at once taken up the question of England's attitude towards her American colonies. Burke understood America better than anyone else in Parliament; he was passionately devoted to the cause of human justice; and he pleaded for conciliation with America not only because he foresaw that it alone would save the empire, but because it was the only righteous course to pursue. Burke failed; England went her way under George III and Lord North, and the colonies were lost. He then turned his attention to India, studying it as carefully as he had America, vizualizing with the imagination of a poet the results of English oppression, and finally denouncing the English system in a series of attacks that culminated in the impeachment (1787-95) of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General. The publication in 1790 of the Reflections on the Revolution in France marks the beginning of his hostility towards French republicanism. The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), and the Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796-97), continued in the same vein, and established Burke as the great champion of conservatism, the upholder of the established order of things against the forces that were making for destruction.

Matthew Arnold speaks of Burke as a man who "saturated politics with thought." It is well known that as an orator he was ineffective, and that the qualities which make his essays so powerful detracted from his success on the floor of the House. But he could afford to give up the success of the moment for the more lasting triumphs he has won. His was the noblest prose of the century in England; massive, pregnant with ideas, yet always clear; logically concise, yet vibrant with an emotion that colors his paragraphs as a kindred emotion colors the great utterances of Lincoln.

Lord Morley's Life, in the E. M. L., is a good biography of Burke. Various editions of his speeches are readily accessible; the Select Works, edited by E. J. Payne (Clarendon Press, 3 vols.), is excellent.

THE PRECURSORS OF ROMANTICISM

The poets thus roughly and somewhat inaccurately classed together are more important to the student of English literary history as a group than as individuals. They wrote during the years when the ideals established by Dryden and Pope and maintained by Johnson were dominant in England, and they mark the gradual turning of the tide towards Romanticism. At no time before Wordsworth was the dominance of the PseudoClassicists seriously challenged; but that a new spirit was abroad even during the hey-day of the old order, the work of these men, and of Gray and Cowper, is ample testimony. In freedom from literary rule and precept, in choice of forms and material which if not actually new were at least comparatively new to the eighteenth century, in their unusual attitude towards nature and man, and in their instinct for self-expression, these men unmistakably foreshadowed the age of Wordsworth and Byron.

Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), a Scotchman, did much to continue the old tradition of Scottish song and ballad, and furnished Burns with models for some of his best work. James Thomson (1700-48), was also born in Scotland, but went up to London in 1725. Here he attained renown as the author of The Seasons (1730), a descriptive poem portraying country life during the changing year. Both the material and the form-blank verse-were new to the eighteenth century; still more unusual was The Castle of Indolence (1748), which remains to this day one of the best imitations of both the form and mood of Spenser's Faerie Queene. Robert Blair (1699–1746), is remembered as the author of one poem, The Grave (1743), in blank verse, a gloomy if at times effective monologue that attained a considerable vogue at the time and had some influence on later poets. Edward Young (1681-1765), although the author of much besides the Night Thoughts (1742), owes his fame to this one poem. In blank verse which at times rises to a genuine eloquence, Young discourses on "Life, Death, and Immortality," in much the mood of Blair's Grave. James Macpherson (1736-96) was the author of the socalled poems of Ossian. It is probable that Macpherson built up his forgeries around some genuine fragments of old Celtic verse; but for the mood of the poems, the "delight in sorrow," and the striking portrayal of mountain scenery, he alone was responsible. During his lifetime the cheat was suspected; Dr. Johnson, for instance, refused to be taken in; but despite this uncertainty these "mountain monotones" attained a tremendous popularity in England and on the continent. William Collins (1721-59) brought to the mideighteenth century a lyric instinct and a finished technique that mark him as one of the most distinguished poets of the period. During a life that was short and clouded by insanity Collins wrote a series of odes and a few lyrics which, however little they may have appealed to the mass of his contemporaries, have found admirers in every succeeding generation. Thomas Chatterton (175270) is like Macpherson famous for his literary

forg.re. At the age of fifteen he planned and in large part executed a cycle of romantic tales, cast in an imitation middle-English dialect, and represented as the work of a fifteenth century poet named Rowley. Disappointed in his hope to make a living as a man of letters, Chatterton poisoned himself in his London garret, and the world has not ceased to wonder at the largeness and splendor of the boy's poetic accomplishment and promise. William Blake (1757-1827), poet, artist, engraver, and mystic, was one of the most eccentric of English men of letters, and as such has had little influence on the main current of English verse. But the simple perfection and daring imagery of Blake's lyrics, especially the Songs of Innocence (1789), and Songs of Experience (1794), are untouched by the obscurity of his longer, works, and mark him as one of the masters of English song. George Crabbe (1754-1832), though he did most of his work after the Lyrical Ballads had been published, clung to the eighteenth century couplet that connects him with Pope. But his determination to picture with unvarnished truthfulness the life of a small English town makes The Village (1783) and The Borough (1810) unlike the conventional description of the eighteenth century, and Crabbe is on the whole a herald of the new age.

GRAY (1716-1771)

Thomas Gray's life was uneventful. He was born in London, December, 1716. At Eton he met Horace Walpole, whose name is connected with the publication of some of Gray's most famous poems. He went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, but left in 1738 without a degree. In 1739 Gray and Walpole together made the "grand tour," the records of which are preserved in some of Gray's most memorable letters. From 1742 until his death in 1771 he lived as an academic recluse at Cambridge. In 1757 he declined the laureateship; though appointed Professor of Modern History in 1768 he delivered no lectures. One of the most scholarly of English poets, he shrank instinctively from the notoriety attendant upon publication; he printed but few verses, and the most famous, the Elegy, he published only because of the fear that a mangled and pirated copy was to appear in a magazine. But despite his sensitive and shrinking nature, the range of Gray's intellectual life was very wide; his letters and miscellaneous writings witness the fact that he was interested both in the worlds of art and letters and in the political and social development of his time.

His verse would be important in whatever age it had been written; but coming as it did during the years of transition from Pseudo-Classicism to Romanticism, it is unusually significant. Gray himself illustrates the change that was gradually to take place in all English literature. Beginning as a classicist, he wrote the Ode to Spring (1742), and the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742), in conventional eighteenth century "poetic diction," and indulged in a good deal of conventional moralizing. The Elegy, published 1751, although begun may years before,

was written in an approved classical form, but is distinctly different in mood from the earlier work, and is the most finished example of the "grave-yard school" which, including Blair's Grave and Young's Night Thoughts, looks back to Il Penseroso for much of its inspiration. The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, printed by Walpole in 1757, are still farther from eighteenth century ideals. But it was not till 1761, when Gray wrote The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, that his work became thoroughly romantic.

Dr. Johnson's criticism, in his Life of Gray, is unsympathetic, but valuable as showing the attitude of the eighteenth century towards a poet of the new order. Gosse's Life, in the E. M. L., is a good biography. Phelps's Selections, in the Athenæum Press Series (Ginn), is an inexpensive edition of Gray's best work, both prose and poetry, and contains much valuable editorial matter. Gosse's edition of the complete works (4 vols., Macmillan) is the standard. Arnold's essay on Gray (Essays in Criticism, Macmillan) is appreciative, and in most respects accurate.

COWPER (1731-1800)

William Cowper, one of the pathetic figures in English literature, lived a life that was clouded by periodic attacks of religious melancholia and insanity, and was otherwise uneventful. Born in 1731, in Hertfordshire, he spent seven years at the Westminster School. In 1754 he was called to the bar; the dread of a public examination before assuming a clerkship in the House of Lords precipitated his first attack of insanity in 1763. From this he did not recover for eighteen months; never again was he free from the spectre. The rest of his life is memorable for his friendship with Morley Unwin and his wife Mary Unwin. Mr. Unwin, a clergyman, died in 1765; in 1767 Cowper and Mrs. Unwin began their life together at Olney. It is probable that Cowper would have married Mrs. Unwin had he not suffered a second attack

of insanity in 1773. After recovering, Cowper, in need of some regular employment, began to write verses, and amused himself by carpentry, gardening, and caring for tame hares and other household pets. His first great work, The Task, appeared in 1785. In this long poem Cowper allowed his fancy to play over things in general; as a result The Task is a composite of verse descriptive of the English landscape that he knew and loved, of satire and comment on conditions in Europe, and of accounts of Cowper's life. It is written in blank verse; the fact that it became generally popular is indicative that the tyranny of the couplet was already being broken. John Gilpin, Cowper's most famous piece of humorous verse, also appeared in 1785; in 1791 he completed his translation of Homer. The remaining years were darkened by sorrow and melancholia. In 1794 he was again insane; in 1796 Mrs. Unwin died. The Castaway and To Mary picture with poignant force the pathetic blackness of this period.

Aside from the interest attaching to Cowper's

poetry because of its inherent worth, there is a significance in his work which students of literary history have not failed to mark. In a real sense Cowper was the spiritual predecessor of the great Romanticists. He had a sympathy for outcast humanity as sincere as Shelley's, if less passionate; his love of nature was as deep-seated as Wordworth's, though his musings on nature never led him to the heights which Wordsworth attained through his "impassioned contemplation."

The best one volume edition of Cowper is the Globe (Macmillan); the volume of selections in the Athenæum Press series (Ginn) is representative and inexpensive. Southey's Life, though written long ago, is still valuable; more recent is Goldwin Smith's in the E. M. L. Leslie Stephen's essay, in his Hours in a Library, and Bagehot's, in his Literary Studies, are suggestive.

BURNS (1759-1796)

Robert Burns lived a life of hard work, interrupted by periods of reckless and enthusiastic relaxation; a life which from some points of view was a tragic failure, involving many besides Burns himself in the wreck. Yet it is noteworthy that such stern moralists as Wordsworth and Whittier should have been willing to forgive Burns's many weaknesses, and to point only to the largeness of his accomplishment.

He was born in Ayrshire, near the west coast of Scotland, in 1759. His father, William Burnes, was a hard-working man of the peasant class, but mentally superior to the average small farmer, and the equal of any one in ambition for his children. By the time Burns was fifteen he was doing much of the work of his father's farm; in 1784, when his father died, he and his brother Gilbert undertook farming for themselves, but with poor financial results. It was about this time that he met Jean Armour, later his wife. During 1785 and 1786 he wrote much of the verse on which his fame depends; had he never published anything but the 1786 volume of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, he would have been sure of ultimate recognition. Here, in the little volume printed at Kilmarnock, the proceeds of which were to defray the cost of Burns's intended emigration to America, were The Twa Dogs, The Holy Fair, The Cotter's Saturday Night, To a Mouse, To a Daisy, and the Epistle to Davie. The success of this venture prompted Burns to change his plans, and in the same year he went up to Edinburgh, where he became the lion of the season. A second volume, published in Edinburgh in 1787, brought him more renown and a considerable sum of money. In 1788 he married Jean Armour, and took up farming at Ellisland. But his venture proved unsuccessful, and in 1789 he was glad to fall back on an appointment to the excise service that brought him fifty pounds per year. In 1791 he moved to Dumfries, and there, after five years of hard labor as exciseman, he died.

Burns's poetry has at times been overpraised, especially by Scottish critics; but after all allowances have been made for national or personal

prejudices, much remains of permanent value. His best songs, written in most part during the last six years of his life, his simple pictures of Scottish domesticity, his satires on cant and makebelieve in Church and State, and his two unique contributions to English poetry, Tam O'Shanter and The Jolly Beggars, these have passed out of the narrow circle of Scottish and local verse, and have become part of the world's lit

erature.

The best edition of Burns's poetry is the Centenary (four volumes, T. C. and E. C. Jack). The one volume Cambridge edition (Houghton Mifflin) contains the Centenary text and some of the notes. Shairp's Life, in the E. M. L., is the best brief biography. Carlyle's well known essay, Stevenson's, in his Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and Henley's, in the Centenary and Cambridge editions, are all valuable.

WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

William Wordsworth was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, in 1770. After spending his school years among the lakes and hills he went up to St. John's College, Cambridge, where in 1791 he graduated. Twice during the Revolution he visited France; the first time on a walking tour during one of his long vacations from Cambridge, the second in 1791, after his graduation. The first time he had been comparatively unmoved by the events that were taking place on the continent; the second, he was drawn into the whirl of French politics, and became an enthusiastic supporter of the Revolution, returning to England only when his guardians recalled him by stopping his allowance. The years from 1792 to 1795 were darkened by doubt and spiritual distress. The excesses of the Terror, which he had at first tried to justify as the necessary preliminary to a social regeneration, became more and more appalling; gradually his faith in the French cause was shaken, and at the same time he began to lose faith in humanity. From this state of despairing uncertainty he was recalled by the sympathetic friendship of his sister Dorothy. On a precariously small income the two began housekeeping, and under the influence of Dorothy, and freed from the necessity of earning his daily bread, Wordsworth devoted himself as seriously as Milton had done to preparation for the writing of poetry. From 1795 to 1797 the brother and sister lived at Racedown, Dorsetshire; here they were visited by Coleridge, at whose suggestion the Wordsworths moved to Alfoxden, Somersetshire, within a mile and a half of Coleridge's home at Nether Stowey. Here was formed one of the most notable of literary friendships. Coleridge encouraged Wordsworth by his sympathetic praise; Wordsworth in turn stimulated Coleridge. Together the two men tramped over the Quantock hills, and planned the volume that appeared in 1798 as the Lyrical Ballads. The importance of the work was two-fold. Historically it is significant in the development of Romanticism as the first example of conscious protest against the ideals of PseudoClassicism. And here the the two friends pub