This, being an age of transition, is an age of unrest, of advance and retreat, of half-lights and dubious victories. But if we bring together the different types of literature, and mark how they have developed during the period, we can see that the trend of the age is quite clear.
1. Poetry. In 1740 we have Pope still alive and powerful, and Johnson an aspiring junior; in 1800, with Burns and Blake, Romanticism has unquestionably arrived. This great change came gradually, but its stages can be observed with some precision.
(a) The first symptom of the coming change was the decline of the heroic couplet, the dominance of which passed away with its greatest exponent, Pope. Toward the middle of the century a large number of other poetical forms can be observed creeping back into favor.
(b) The change was first seen in the free use of the Pindaric ode in the works of Gray and Collins, which appeared in the middle years of the century. The Pindaric ode is a useful medium for the transitional stage, for it has the double advantage of being “classical” and of being free from the more formal rules of couplet and stanza. Gray’s The Bard (1757) and Collins’s ode The Passions (1747) are among the best of the type.
(c) Another omen was the revival of the ballad, which was due to renewed interest in the older kinds of literature. The revived species, as seen in Goldsmith’s The Hermit and Cowper’s John Gilpin, has not the grimness and crude narrative force of the genuine ballad, but it is lively and often humorous. Another ballad-writer was Thomas Percy (1729–1811), who, in addition to collecting the Reliques (1765), composed ballads of his own, such as The Friar of Orders Grey. Chatterton’s Bristowe Tragedy has much of the fire and somberness of the old ballads.
(d) The descriptive and narrative poems begin with the old-fashioned London (1738) of Johnson; the development is seen in Goldsmith’s Traveller (1764) and Deserted Village (1770), in which the heroic couplet is quickened and transformed by a real sympathy for nature and the poor; the advance is carried still further by the blank-verse poems of Cowper (The Task) and Crabbe (The Village) and the Spenserian stanzas of minor poets like Shenstone (The Schoolmistress).
(e) Finally there is the rise of the lyric. The Pindarics of Collins and Gray are lyrics in starch and buckram; the works of Chatterton, Smart, Macpherson, Cowper, and, lastly, of Burns and Blake show in order the lyrical spirit struggling with its bonds, shaking itself free, and finally soaring in triumph. Romanticism has arrived.
2. Drama. In this period nothing is more remarkable than the poverty of its dramatic literature. Of this no real explanation can be given. The age was simply not a dramatic one; for the plays that the age produced, with the exceptions of a few notable examples of comedy, are hardly worth noticing.
Tragedy comes off worst of all. The sole tragedy hitherto mentioned in this chapter is Johnson’s Irene (1749), which only the reputation of its author has preserved from complete oblivion. A tragedy which had a great vogue was Douglas (1754), by John Home (1722–1808). It is now almost forgotten. Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) produced some historical blank-verse tragedies, such as Count Basil (1798) and De Montfort (1798). Her plays make fairly interesting reading, and some of their admirers, including Scott, said that she was Shakespeare revived.
Among the comedies we have the sprightly plays of Goldsmith, already noticed, Fielding’s Tom Thumb, and the work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816).