Poetry was in a transition state; it was taking its leave of the unhealthy satire and the technical wit of Queen Anne's reign, and attempting, on the one hand, the impostures of Macpherson and Chatterton,—to which we shall hereafter refer,—and, on the other, the restoration of the pastoral from the theatrical to the real, in Thomson's song of the Rolling Year, and Cowper's pleasant Task, so full of life and nature. Swallow-like, English poetry had hung about the eaves or skimmed the surface of town and court; but now, like the lark, it soared into freer air—
Cœtusque vulgares et udam
Spernit humum fugiente penna.
In short, it was a day of general awakening. The intestine troubles excited by the Jacobites were brought to an end by the disaster of Culloden, in 1745. The German campaigns culminating at Minden, in 1759, opened a door to the study of German literature, and of the Teutonic dialects as elements of the English language.
It is, therefore, not astonishing that in this period Literature should begin to arrange itself into its present great divisions. As in an earlier age the drama had been born to cater to a popular taste, so in this, to satisfy the public demand, arose English prose fiction in its peculiar and enduring form. There had been grand and desultory works preceding this, such as Robinson Crusoe, The Pilgrim's Progress, and Swift's inimitable story of Gulliver; but the modern novel, unlike these, owes its origin to a general desire for delineations of private life and manners. "Show us ourselves!" was the cry.
A novel may be defined as a fictitious story of modern life describing the management and mastery of the human passions, and especially the universal passion of love. Its power consists in the creation of ideal characters, which leave a real impress upon the reader's mind; it must be a prose epic in that there is always a hero, or, at least, a heroine, generally both, and a drama in its presentation of scenes and supplementary personages. Thackeray calls his Vanity Fair a novel without a hero: it is impossible to conceive a novel without a heroine. There must also be a dénouement, or consummation; in short, it must have, in the words of Aristotle, a beginning, middle, and ending, in logical connection and consecutive interest.
Daniel Defoe.—Before, however, proceeding to consider the modern novel, we must make mention of one author, distinctly of his own age as a political pamphleteer, but who, in his chief and inimitable work, stands alone, without antecedent or consequent. Robinson Crusoe has had a host of imitators, but no rival.
Daniel Foe, or, as he afterwards called himself, De Foe, was born in London, in the year 1661. He was the son of a butcher, but such was his early aptitude, for learning, that he was educated to become a dissenting minister. His own views, however, were different: he became instead a political author, and wrote with great force against the government of James II. and the Established Church, and in favor of the dissenters. When the Duke of Monmouth landed to make his fatal campaign, Defoe joined his standard; but does not seem to have suffered with the greater number of the duke's adherents.
He was a warm supporter of William III.; and his famous poem, The True-Born Englishman, was written in answer to an attack upon the king and the Dutch, called The Foreigners. Of his own poem he says, in the preface, "When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against the Dutch, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets for employing foreigners and being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a banter they put upon themselves, since—speaking of Englishmen ab origine—we are really all foreigners ourselves:"
The Pict and painted Briton, treach'rous Scot,
By hunger, theft, and rapine hither brought;
Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
Whose red-haired offspring everywhere remains;
Who, joined with Norman-French, compound the breed
From whence your true-born Englishmen proceed.
In 1702, just after the death of King William, Defoe published his severely ironical pamphlet, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters. Assuming the character of a High Churchman, he says: "'Tis vain to trifle in the matter. The light, foolish handling of them by fines is their glory and advantage. If the gallows instead of the compter, and the galleys instead of the fines, were the reward of going to a conventicle, there would not be so many sufferers." His irony was at first misunderstood: the High Churchmen hailed him as a champion, and the Dissenters hated him as an enemy. But when his true meaning became apparent, a reward of £50 was offered by the government for his discovery. His so-called "scandalous and seditious pamphlet" was burnt by the common hangman: he was tried, and sentenced to pay two hundred marks, to stand three times in the pillory, and to be imprisoned during the queen's pleasure. He bore his sentence bravely, and during his two years' residence in prison he published a periodical called The Review. In 1709 he wrote a History of the Union between England and Scotland.