A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2

by J. M. D. Meiklejohn

[17.] John Bunyan (1628-1688), one of the most popular of our prose-writers, was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in the year 1628—just three years before the birth of Dryden. He served, when a young man, with the Parliamentary forces, and was present at the siege of Leicester. At the Restoration, he was apprehended for preaching, in disobedience to the Conventicle Act, “was had home to prison, and there lay complete twelve years.” Here he supported himself and his family by making tagged laces and other small-wares; and here, too, he wrote the immortal Pilgrim’s Progress. After his release, he became pastor of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. He had a great power of bringing persons who had quarrelled together again; and he was so popular among those who knew him, that he was generally spoken of as “Bishop Bunyan.” On a journey, undertaken to reconcile an estranged father and a rebellious son, he caught a severe cold, and died of fever in London, in the year 1688. Every one has read, or will read, the Pilgrim’s Progress; and it may be said, without exaggeration, that to him who has not read the book, a large part of English life and history is dumb and unintelligible. Bunyan has been called the “Spenser of the people,” and “the greatest master of allegory that ever lived.” His power of imagination is something wonderful; and his simple, homely, and vigorous style makes everything so real, that we seem to be reading a narrative of everyday events and conversations. His vocabulary is not, as Macaulay said, “the vocabulary of the common people;” rather should we say that his English is the English of the Bible and of the best religious writers. His style is, almost everywhere, simple, homely, earnest, and vernacular—without being vulgar. Bunyan’s books have, along with Shakespeare and Tyndale’s works, been among the chief supports of an idiomatic, nervous, and simple English.

[18.] John Locke (1632-1704), a great English philosopher, was born at Wrington, near Bristol, in the year 1632. He was educated

at Oxford; but he took little interest in the Greek and Latin classics, his chief studies lying in medicine and the physical sciences. He became attached to the famous Lord Shaftesbury, under whom he filled several public offices—among others, that of Commissioner of Trade. When Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland, Locke followed him, and spent several years in exile in that country. All his life a very delicate man, he yet, by dint of great care and thoughtfulness, contrived to live to the age of seventy-two. His two most famous works are Some Thoughts concerning Education, and the celebrated Essay on the Human Understanding. The latter, which is his great work, occupied his time and thoughts for eighteen years. In both these books, Locke exhibits the very genius of common-sense. The purpose of education is, in his opinion, not to make learned men, but to maintain “a sound mind in a sound body;” and he begins the education of the future man even from his cradle. In his philosophical writings, he is always simple; but, as he is loose and vacillating in his use of terms, this simplicity is often purchased at the expense of exactness and self-consistency.

[ CHAPTER VI.]

THE FIRST HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

[1.] The Age of Prose.—The eighteenth century was an age of prose in two senses. In the first place, it was a prosaic age; and, in the second place, better prose than poetry was produced by its writers. One remarkable fact may also be noted about the chief prose-writers of this century—and that is, that they were, most of them, not merely able writers, not merely distinguished literary men, but also men of affairs—men well versed in the world and in matters of the highest practical moment, while some were also statesmen holding high office. Thus, in the first half of the century, we find Addison, Swift, and Defoe either holding office or influencing and guiding those who held office; while, in the latter half, we have men like Burke, Hume, and Gibbon, of whom the same, or nearly the same, can be said. The poets, on the contrary, of this eighteenth century, are all of them—with the very slightest exceptions—men who devoted most of their lives to poetry, and had little or nothing to do with practical matters. It may also be noted here that the character of the eighteenth century becomes more and more prosaic as it goes on—less and less under the influence of the spirit of poetry, until, about the close, a great reaction makes itself felt in the persons of Cowper, Chatterton, and Burns, of Crabbe and Wordsworth.

[2.] The First Half.—The great prose-writers of the first half of the eighteenth century are Addison and Steele, Swift and

Defoe. All of these men had some more or less close connection with the rise of journalism in England; and one of them, Defoe, was indeed the founder of the modern newspaper. By far the most powerful intellect of these four was Swift. The greatest poets of the first half of the eighteenth century were Pope, Thomson, Collins, and Gray. Pope towers above all of them by a head and shoulders, because he was much more fertile than any, and because he worked so hard and so untiringly at the labour of the file—at the task of polishing and improving his verses. But the vein of poetry in the three others—and more especially in Collins—was much more pure and genuine than it was in Pope at any time of his life—at any period of his writing. Let us look at each of these writers a little more closely.

[3.] Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), one of the most fertile writers that England ever saw, and one who has been the delight of many generations of readers, was born in the city of London in the year 1661. He was educated to be a Dissenting minister; but he turned from that profession to the pursuit of trade. He attempted several trades,—was a hosier, a hatter, a printer; and he is said also to have been a brick and tile maker. In 1692 he failed in business; but, in no long time after, he paid every one of his creditors to the uttermost farthing. Through all his labours and misfortunes he was always a hard and careful reader,—an omnivorous reader, too, for he was in the habit of reading almost every book that came in his way. He made his first reputation by writing political pamphlets. One of his pamphlets brought him into high favour with King William; another had the effect of placing him in the pillory and lodging him in prison. But while in Newgate, he did not idle away his time or “languish”; he set to work, wrote hard, and started a newspaper, The Review,—the earliest genuine newspaper England had seen up to his time. This paper he brought out two or three times a-week; and every word of it he wrote himself. He continued to carry it on single-handed for eight years. In 1706, he was made a member of the Commission for bringing about the union between England and Scotland; and his great knowledge of commerce and commercial affairs were of singular value to this Commission. In 1715 he had a dangerous illness, brought on by political excitement; and, on his recovery, he gave up most of his political

writing, and took to the composition of stories and romances. Although now a man of fifty-four, he wrote with the vigour and ease of a young man of thirty. His greatest imaginative work was written in 1719—when he was nearly sixty—The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner,... written by Himself. Within six years he had produced twelve works of a similar kind. He is said to have written in all two hundred and fifty books in the course of his lifetime. He died in 1731.