Prose literature had many distinguished exponents. Jonathan Swift looms up before us as a gloomy, overshadowing figure, whose saturnine genius found bitter yet powerful expression in Gulliver’s Travels, the Battle of the Books, and the Tale of a Tub. His command of English was masterly, but his wit was coarse, his life hopelessly sad, and his death miserable.
Daniel Defoe was not only one of the most vigorous of political pamphleteers, but practically the father of the English novel by his Robinson Crusoe, a work which has surpassed almost every other in its uninterrupted popularity. Defoe invested fictitious events with an unapproachable semblance of truth. Metaphysical literature had its best representative in the philosopher Bishop Berkeley, the founder of Idealism in English philosophy; Bernard de Mandeville unfolded a new satirical philosophy in The Fable of the Bees, which was intended to prove that the vices of society are the foundation of civilization; and Bishop Butler sought to reconcile reason and revelation by his closely argumentative work, the Analogy of Religion.
Rise of the Essay and Modern Newspaper.—A new and interesting form of literary [767] effort, which popularized letters and criticism, was the periodical essay, instituted by Joseph Addison and Sir Richard Steele.
The latter began the Tatler, which dealt in humorous and incisive fashion with the social and political life of the times. Steele was aided by Addison, and they afterwards founded the more famous Spectator, which was inimitable in its humor and criticism. The Guardian and the Freeholder followed, and a higher tone was given to both literature and manners by these admirable publications.
The modern newspaper had its origin in the Public Intelligencer, begun in August, 1663, by Sir Roger L’Estrange. The Oxford Gazette began in November, 1665, and the London Gazette on the 5th of February, 1666. Defoe, while in prison, began the publication of the Review (February, 1704).
The drama at the close of the seventeenth century had, besides the greater names already mentioned, Sedley, Shadwell, Mrs. Behn, and Mrs. Centlivre, all of whose comedies, however, were licentious. Nicholas Rowe wrote heavy tragedies, which are no more likely to rise again in popularity than Addison’s Cato. Foote, Cibber, and Fielding reproduced the follies of the times in their comedies and farces; and the Beggar’s Opera, by Gay, produced in 1728, was the first specimen of the English ballad opera. Sentimental comedy is associated with Macklin, the Colmans, Murphy, Cumberland, and others; but the two greatest names in English comedy in the eighteenth century are Goldsmith and Sheridan. The delightful humor of The Good-natured Man and She Stoops to Conquer is only to be matched by the sparkling wit of the Rivals and the School for Scandal.
Samuel Johnson, born in 1709, began to write in 1744, and from that period until his death in 1784 he was an acknowledged leading power in letters. His Lives of the Poets, his Rasselas, The Rambler, and the great Dictionary were remarkable undertakings in various fields; while the world could afford to part with a thousand masterpieces rather than lose that immortal Biography by Boswell which has enshrined his master’s opinions and conversations. The Letters of Junius remind us of the right of criticism over public events and public men, and of the struggle by which the freedom of the press was ultimately won.
RISE OF THE NOVEL AND PERIOD OF ROMANTICISM, 1740-1837
The modern novel of actual life and manners dates from 1740, when Samuel Richardson published his Pamela, a story that was the talk and wonder of the town. It was followed by Clarissa Harlowe, its author’s masterpiece—a book charged with pathos, and instinct with tenderness and morality. Henry Fielding, “the prose Homer of human nature,” and, if not so delicate, a more powerful artist than Richardson, issued his Joseph Andrews in 1742, and his world-famous Tom Jones in 1749. Tobias Smollett wrote his Roderick Random in 1748, and this was followed by other stories as realistic as Fielding’s but much more marred by caricature. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey were novelties in prose writing, and, although they are thin as novels, they will live for their peculiar wit and pathos. Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield, published in 1766, stands alone for its idyllic beauty and charming simplicity. Fanny Burney’s Evelina and Cecilia were noticeable for invention and observation and skill in portraiture.
The poetry of the second half of the century was varied in character, but it closed with a noble elevation in Burns. To the heavy religious poems of Blair and Young succeeded the more artistic strains of Gray and Collins and Goldsmith, and the mystical yearnings and Elizabethan fervor of Blake. Thomson, one of the most excellent of descriptive poets, had given place to Shenstone, who had less genius but more taste, and a third writer of the Spenserian stanza was found in Beattie. Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry brought the ballad again into favor; while Chatterton deceived the very elect by his marvelous imitation of the older forms of poetry.