Literature lost some great names in the early part of George the Second's reign. William Congreve and Richard Steele both died in 1729. Congreve's works do not belong to the time of which we are writing. He was not sixty years old when he died, and he had long ceased to take any active part in literature. Swift deplores, in a letter to an acquaintance, "the death of our friend Mr. Congreve, whom I loved from my youth, and who surely, besides his other talents, was a very agreeable companion." Swift adds that Congreve "had the misfortune to squander away a very good constitution in his younger days," and "upon his own account I could not much desire the continuance of his life under so much pain and so many infirmities." Congreve was beyond comparison the greatest English comic dramatist of his time. Since the days of Ben Jonson and until the days of Sheridan there was no one who could fairly be compared with him. His comedy was not in the least like the bold, broad, healthy, Aristophanic humor of Ben Jonson; the two stand better in contrast than in comparison. Jonson drew from the whole living English world of his time; Congreve drew from the men and women whom he had seen in society. Congreve took society as he found it in his earlier days. The men and women with whom he then mixed were for the most part flippant, insincere, corrupt, and rather proud of their corruption; and Congreve filled his plays with figures very lifelike for such a time. He has not drawn many men or women whom one could admire. Even his heroines, if they are chaste in their lives, {300} are anything but pure in their conversation, and seem to have no moral principle beyond that which is represented by what Heine calls an "anatomical chastity." Angelica, the heroine of "Love for Love," is evidently meant by Congreve to be all that a charming young Englishwoman ought to be; and she is charming, fresh, and fascinating even still. But she occasionally talks in a manner which would be a little strong for a barrack-room now; and nothing gives her more genuine delight than to twit her kind, fond old uncle with his wife's infidelities, to make it clear to him that all the world is acquainted with the full particulars of his shame, and to sport with his jealous agonies. Congreve was the first dramatic author who put an English seaman on the stage; and, after his characteristic fashion, he made his Ben Legend a selfish, coarse, and ruffianly lout. But if one cannot admire many of Congreve's characters, on the other hand one cannot help admiring every sentence they speak. The only fault to be found with their talk is that it is too witty, too brilliant, for any manner of real life. Society would have to be all composed of male and female Congreves to make such conversation possible. There is more strength, originality, and depth in it than even in the conversation in "The Rivals" and "The School for Scandal." The same fault has been found with Sheridan which is to be found with Congreve. We need not make too much of it. No warning example is called for. There will never be many dramatists whose dialogue will deserve the censure of critics on the ground that it is too witty.
[Sidenote: 1729—Death of Steele]
Of Steele we have often had occasion to speak. His fame has been growing rather than fading with time. At one period he was ranked by critics as far below the level of Addison; few men now would not set him on a pedestal as high. He was more natural, more simple, more fresh than Addison. There is some justice in the remark of Hazlitt that "Steele seems to have gone into his closet chiefly to set down what he had observed out-of-doors;" {301} while Addison appears "to have spent most of his time in his study," spinning out to the utmost there the hints "which he borrowed from Steele or took from nature." Every one, however, will cordially say with Hazlitt, "I am far from wishing to depreciate Addison's talents, but I am anxious to do justice to Steele." There are not many names in English literature round which a greater affection clings than that of Steele. Leigh Hunt, in writing of Congreve, speaks of "the love of the highest aspirations" which he sometimes displays, and which makes us think of what he might have been under happier and purer auspices. Leigh Hunt refers in especial to Congreve's essay in the Tatler on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, whom Congreve calls Aspasia—"an effusion so full of enthusiasm for the moral graces, and worded with an appearance of sincerity so cordial, that we can never read it without thinking it must have come from Steele." "It is in this essay," Leigh Hunt goes on, "that he says one of the most elegant and truly loving things that were ever uttered by an unworldly passion: 'To love her is a liberal education.'" Leigh Hunt's critical judgment was better than his information. The words "to love her is a liberal education" are by Steele, and not by Congreve. They do not appear in the essay by Congreve on the character of Lady Elizabeth Hastings, but in a subsequent essay by Steele, in which, after a fashion common enough in the Tatler and the Spectator, one author takes up some figure created or described by another, and gives it new touches and commends it afresh to the reader. Steele was doing this with Congreve's picture of Aspasia, and it was then that he crowned the whole work by the exquisite and immortal words which Leigh Hunt could never read without thinking they must have come from the man who was in fact their author.
If literature had its losses in these years, it had also its gains. Not long before the time at which we have now arrived, English literature had achieved three great successes. Pope wrote the first three books of his {302} "Dunciad," Swift published his "Gulliver's Travels," and Gay set the town wild with his "Beggar's Opera." We are far from any thought of classifying the "Beggar's Opera" as a work of art on a level with the "Dunciad" or "Gulliver's Travels," but in its way it is a masterpiece. It is thoroughly original, fresh, and vivid. It added one or two distinctly new figures to the humorous drama. It is clever as a satire and charming as a story. One cannot be surprised that when it had the attraction of novelty the public raved about it. To say anything about "Gulliver's Travels" or the "Dunciad," except to note the historical fact that each was published, would of course be mere superfluity and waste of words.
In 1731 the first steps were taken in a reform of some importance in the liberation of our legal procedure. It was arranged that English should be substituted for Latin in the presentments, indictments, pleadings, and all other documents used in our courts of law. The early stages of this most wise and needful reform were met with much opposition by lawyers and pedants. One main argument employed in favor of the retention of the old system was that, if the language of our legal documents were to be changed, no man would be at the pains of studying Latin any more, and that in a few years no one would be able to read a word of some of our own most valuable historical records. It was mildly suggested on the other side that there would always be some men among us who "either out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain," would make it their business to keep up the knowledge of Latin, and that a very few of such antiquarians would suffice to give the country all the information drawn from Latin records which it could possibly require or care to have. We have had some experience since that time, and it does not appear that the disuse of Latin in our legal documents has led to its falling into absolute disuse among reading men. There are still among us, and apparently will always be, persons who, "either out of curiosity, or for the sake of gain," keep up their knowledge of Latin. {303} The curiosity to read Virgil and Horace and Cicero and Caesar, in the tongue which those authors employed, is more keen than it ever was before. Men indulge themselves freely in it, even without reference to the sake of gain.
[Sidenote: 1731—Quarrel of Walpole and Townshend]
Meanwhile a change long foreseen by those who were in the inner political circles was rapidly approaching. The combination between Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, was about to be broken up. It had for a long time been a question whether it was to be the firm of Townshend and Walpole, or Walpole and Townshend; and of late years the question was becoming settled. If the firm was to endure at all, it must clearly be Walpole and Townshend. Walpole had been growing every day in power and influence. The King, as well as the Queen, treated him openly and privately as the head of the Government. Townshend saw this, and felt bitterly aggrieved. He had for a long time been a much more powerful personage socially than Walpole, and he could not bear with patience the supremacy which Walpole was all too certainly obtaining. Great part of that supremacy was due to Walpole's superiority of talents; but something was due also to the fact that the House of Commons was becoming a much more important assembly than the House of Lords. The result was inevitable. Townshend for a long time struggled against it. He tried to intrigue against Walpole; he did his best to ingratiate himself with the King. He was a man of austere character and stainless life; but he seems, nevertheless, to have tried at one time the merest arts of the political intriguer to supplant his brother-in-law in the favor and confidence of the King. Perhaps he might have succeeded—it is at least possible—but for the watchful intelligence of Queen Caroline. She saw through all Townshend's schemes, and took care that they should not succeed. At last the two rivals quarrelled. Their quarrel broke out very openly, in the drawing-room of a lady, and in the presence of several distinguished {304} persons. From hot words they were going on to a positive personal struggle, when the spectators at last intervened to "pluck them asunder," in the words of the King in "Hamlet." They were plucked asunder, and then there was talk of a duel. The friends of both succeeded in preventing this scandal, but the brothers-in-law were never thoroughly reconciled, and after a short time Lord Townshend resigned his office. He withdrew from public life altogether, and devoted his remaining years to the enjoyment of the country and the cultivation of agriculture. It is to his credit that when once he had given way to the superior influence of Walpole, he did not afterwards cabal against him, or try to injure him, according to the fashion of the statesmen of the time. On the contrary, when he was once pressed to join in an attack on Walpole's ministry, he firmly refused to do anything of the kind. He said he had resolved to take no further part in political contests, and he did not mean to break his resolution. He was particularly determined not to depart from his resolve in this case, he explained, because his temper was hot, and he was apprehensive that he might be hurried away by personal resentment to take a course which in his cooler moments he should have to regret. Nothing in his public life, perhaps, became him so well as his dignified conduct in his retirement. His place in history is not strongly marked; in this history we shall not hear of him any more.
[Sidenote: 1730—Signs of change in foreign policy]
Colonel Stanhope, who had made the Treaty of Seville, and had been raised to the peerage as Lord Harrington for his services, succeeded Townshend as Secretary of State. Horace Walpole, the brother of Robert, was at his own request recalled from Paris. Walpole, the Prime-minister, had begun to see that it would be necessary for the future to have something like a good understanding with Austria. The friendship with France had been a priceless advantage in its time, but Walpole believed that it had served its turn. It was valuable to England chiefly because it had enabled the Sovereign to keep {305} the movements of the Stuart party in check, and Walpole hoped that the House of Hanover was now secure on the throne, and believed, with too sanguine a confidence, that no other effort would be made to disturb it. Moreover, he saw some reason to think that France, no longer guided by the political intelligence of a man like the Duke of Orleans, was drawing a little too close in her relationship with Spain. Walpole was already looking forward to the coming of a time when it might be necessary for England to strengthen herself against France and Spain, and he therefore desired to get into a good understanding with the Emperor and Austria.
Walpole now had the Government entirely to himself. He was not merely all-powerful in the administration, he actually was the administration. The King knew him to be indispensable; the Queen put the fullest trust in him. His only trouble was with the intrigues of Bolingbroke and the opposition of Pulteney. The latter sometimes affected what would have been called at the time a "mighty unconcern" about political affairs. Writing once to Pope, he says, "Mrs. Pulteney is now in labor; if she does well, and brings me a boy, I shall not care one sixpence how much longer Sir Robert governs England, or Horace governs France." This was written while Horace Walpole was still Ambassador at the French Court. Pulteney, however, was very far from feeling anything like the philosophical indifference which he expressed in his letter to Pope. He never ceased to attack everything done by the Ministry, and to satirize every word said by Walpole. At the same time Pulteney was complaining bitterly to his friends of the attacks made on him by the supporters of Walpole. On February 9, 1730, he wrote a letter to Swift, in which he says that "certain people" had been driven by want of argument "to that last resort of calling names: villain, traitor, seditious rascal, and such ingenious appellations have frequently been bestowed on a couple of friends of yours." "Such usage," he complacently adds, "has made it {306} necessary to return the same polite language; and there has been more Billingsgate stuff uttered from the press within these two months than ever was known before." Swift himself had previously written to his friend Dr. Sheridan a letter in which he declared that "Walpole is peevish and disconcerted, stoops to the vilest offices of hireling scoundrels to write Billingsgate of the lowest and most prostitute kind, and has none but beasts and blockheads for his penmen, whom he pays in ready guineas very liberally." One would have thought that beasts and blockheads could hardly prove very formidable enemies to Swift and Bolingbroke and Pulteney.