XII HISTORY 397 The student will not omit to note, as one of the interesting features of the eighteenth century, the school of history which arose in England toward the end of the reign of George II. History at its best had been what Lamb, with an intention wholly laudatory, calls the chronicles of Burnet, "good old prattle," garrulous and pleasant. Early in the century, the laborious compilations of Strype, Carte, and Echard, which were innocent of any general horizon, of any clear or correct view of the relation of one part of history to another, were accepted as contributions to the science. Rapin's History of England and Rollin's Ancient History, which were well known in England, aimed somewhat higher, but no other French historian, before Voltaire, had any influence in this country; and when the new school made its appearance, it was of purely English growth. The year 1754, in which Hume printed the first volume of his History of England, is the date of the burgeoning of English history; it came to its full greatness in 1776, with the publication of the first volume of Gibbon's Decline and Fall. The sudden efflorescence of this school of historians, with Hume, Gibbon, and Robertson at its head, may be not too fantastically compared with that of the first great generation of novelists, who began to appear twelve years prior to Hume, and who sustained their glory about as long as the historians did. After Gibbon's death there occurred a period of relapse analogous to that which succeeded the death of Smollett. The condition of England had, since late in the Renaissance, afforded no general opportunities for the cultivation of purely provincial literature until the eighteenth century began. The existence of work in dialects or inspired by provincial feeling became from that time forth too evident to be overlooked. But it is the revival of letters in Scotland which is likely first of all to attract the notice of a student, and it is the more necessary to dwell on this because that revival, although more important than any other of its class, was at first so imitative, and remained so feeble until near the end of the century, that it may easily be lost sight of in the glare of English literature. There went on a curious struggle between pure Scots and classic English-men who, as Ramsay of Ochtertyre puts it, "spoke their mother-tongue without disguise," finding it exceedingly difficult to suppress that native idiom when they came to emulate the Spectator or the Tatler. The worst of it was that the Scots tongue was looked upon as rude and contemptible, and for a long time even the preachings and the practice of Allan Ramsay did not contrive to make the dialect fashionable. The revival of popular poetry came at last, and culminated splendidly in Burns. The use of Scotch prose, except by the novelists in dialogue, has never been seriously accepted, and probably never will be. Toward the close of the eighteenth century America began to supply herself with a species of literature, which, however, gave at first but little promise of all she has done within the last hundred years. By far the most eminent of the early American writers was Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), whose works, first collected in 1779, only just come within our chronological limits. Franklin's style is notoriously graceful and charming, but he is almost the only American writer before the Independence who can be named with the recognised masters of eighteenth-century English. It is curious to reflect that in 1780, a date which to the historian of English literature seems late indeed, neither Washington Irving nor Bryant, neither the father of American prose nor the father of American poetry, was yet born. This so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be regarded with that complacency which led the most flourishing part of it to adopt the epithet "Augustan." It will scarcely be denied by its greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five great ages of literature. Deficient in the highest intellectual beauty, in the qualities which awaken the fullest critical enthusiasm, the eighteenth century will be enjoyed more thoroughly by those who make it their special study than by those who skim the entire surface of literature. It has, although on the grand scale XII MASTERY OF PROSE 399 condemned as second-rate, a remarkable fulness and sustained richness which endear it to specialists. If it be compared, for instance, with the real Augustan age in Rome, or with the Spanish period of literary supremacy, it may claim to hold its own against these rivals in spite of their superior rank, because of its more copious interest. If it has neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it has a great extent and variety of writers just below these in merit, and far more numerous than what Rome or Spain can show during those blossoming periods. It is, moreover, fertile at far more · points than either of these schools. This sustained and variegated success, at a comparatively low level of effort, strikes one as characteristic of an age more remarkable for persistent vitality than for rapid and brilliant growth. The Elizabethan vivida vis is absent, the Georgian glow has not yet dawned; but there is a suffused prosaic light of intelligence, of cultivated form, over the whole picture; and during the first half of the period, at least, this is bright enough to be very attractive. Perhaps, in closing, the distinguishing mark of eighteenthcentury literature may be indicated as its mastery of prose as a vehicle for general thought. It is customary to note the Restoration as marking the point where English prose took a modern form. This is true, but there was nevertheless much left to reform in the practice of authors. At the close of the reign of Charles II., we find the most accomplished prose-writer of the age still encumbering himself in the toils of such sentences as this: "That which is not pleasant to me, may be to others who judge better, and to prevent an accusation from my enemies, I am sometimes ready to imagine that my disgust of low comedy proceeds not so much from my judgment as from my temper, which is the reason why I so seldom write it, and that when I succeed in it, I mean so far as to please the audience, yet I am nothing satisfied with what I have done, but am often vexed to hear the people laugh and clap, as they perpetually do, where I intended them no jest, while they let pass the better things, without taking notice of them." A hundred years later, such a sentence had become an impossibility. It is not merely that we should search Burke or Robertson in vain, at their weariest moments, for such a flaccid chain of clauses, but that the ordinary newspaper-man, the reporter or inventor of last night's speeches, would no longer endure this clumsy form, this separation of the noun from its verb, and the pronoun from its noun. It was the work of the period which we roughly describe as the eighteenth century to reform and regulate ordinary writing. It found English prose antiquated, amorphous, without a standard of form; it left it a finished thing, the completed body for which subsequent ages could do no more than weave successive robes of ornament and fashion. Armstrong, John. In Chalmers's English Poets, vol. xvi. BARROW, ISAAC, vols. i.-viii. Theological Works, Oxford, 1830. Ed. Mallet, 5 vols., 1754. Boswell, James, Life of Samuel Johnson. Ed. Birkbeck Hill, 6 vols., 1887. Brooke, Henry, The Fool of Quality. Ed. Kingsley, 2 vols., 1859. Bruce, Michael, Poetical Works. Ed. Grosart, Edinburgh, 1865. Ed. Arber, 1868. Buckinghamshire, John Sheffield, Duke of. In Chalmers's English Poets, vol. x. Budgell, Eustace. [Not yet edited.] Bunyan, John, Works. Ed. Offer, 3 vols., Glasgow, 1855. Burke, Edmund, Works. 16 vols., 1826-27. Burnet, Gilbert, History of His Own Time. Burnet, Thomas. [Not yet edited.] 6 vols., Oxford, 1833. Butler, Joseph, Works. Ed. Halifax, 2 vols., Oxford, 1835-36. Butler, Samuel. 2 vols., Aldine Poets. Byrom, John. In Chalmers's English Poets, vol. xv. |