POETRY.

The wider outlook acquired by travel contributed to an increase of intellectual activity, and improved means of internal communication assisted the dissemination of books. People read more; many instructive books met with a large sale, and circulating libraries were established in the larger towns. In literature the period is marked by an advance in the transition from artificiality of thought, and still more of expression, to what was natural and spontaneous. Antiquity began to attract, and romanticism gradually gained ground. Thomson, who led the flight of poetry from the gilded house of bondage, wrote at an earlier time than ours. For us the new feeling is illustrated by the popularity of Ossian, Bishop Percy's Reliques, Gray's romantic lyrics, and the pseudo-antique poems of Chatterton, a Bristol lad who killed himself in 1770. Goldsmith's poetry belongs to the old school, for he was a follower of Johnson, a strenuous opponent of the new romanticism. The poetry of Cowper, an ardent lover of nature, whose first volume appeared in 1781, though usually conventional in expression, is always sincere and sometimes exquisite. Crabbe, a story-teller and preacher, wrote some true poetry, along with much that is prosaic: rarely moved by an inspiration drawn from nature to desert the conventional couplet, he nevertheless had something of the spirit of the new movement. In 1783 the artist-poet Blake began to write verse which is absolutely untrammelled by convention, mystical, strange, and unequal. Three years later a volume by Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, contained the outpouring of a passionate soul in musical verse, and in 1798, two years after his death, the victory of the romantic school was secured by the publication of the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth and Coleridge, though its triumph was not confirmed until a few years later.

By 1760 Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett had established the English novel, though Smollett's master-piece, Humphrey Clinker, did not appear until 1771, the year of his death. Fiction developed in various directions. In The Vicar of Wakefield Goldsmith, in spite of his literary conservatism, portrayed manners and character with a perfectly natural grace, and with a delightful delicacy of touch. Laurence Sterne, the humorous and indecent prebendary of York, illustrates the prevalence of sensibility in contemporary society in his Tristram Shandy and the Sentimental Journey. It is a curious characteristic of the time that displays of emotion by men and women alike were reckoned as proofs of genuine fineness of feeling. Sterne's sentiment and discursiveness found several feeble imitators. The taste for antiquity was strong in Horace Walpole, and his admiration for "the gothick," expressed in the pointed windows and sham battlements of his house at Strawberry hill, inspired his romance, The Castle of Otranto (1764), which began the romantic movement in fiction. To this movement, destined to be adorned by the genius of Scott, belong Beckford's Vathek, Clara Reeve's Old English Baron, and the once widely popular tales of mystery of Mrs. Radcliffe and "Monk" Lewis, as he was called after his best-known romance (1795). The novel of manners was developed by Fanny Burney's (Madame d'Arblay) Evelina (1778), founded on acute observation, dealing almost wholly with every-day life, replete with satire, and written with extraordinary freshness and vivacity. Castle Rackrent, the first of Maria Edgeworth's Irish tales, appeared in the last year of the century. Before its close, too, Jane Austen was writing novels which as yet could find no publisher, though in their faultless execution, their delicate humour, and their life-like representation of the society with which their author was familiar they remain unrivalled.

SERIOUS PROSE WORKS.

Of the writers of serious prose works, Johnson, as critic, moralist and author, enjoyed until his death in 1784 a kind of literary dictatorship. His greatest achievement, The Lives of the English Poets, belongs to his later days. This delightful work pronounces with unfaltering dogmatism judgments founded on canons of criticism which were accepted in the then expiring age of Augustan literature. His Life by his satellite Boswell holds the first place among biographies as a triumph of portraiture. The new interest in antiquity was fostered by the rise of English historical writing. In the earliest years of the reign Hume completed his History of England, which, though no longer regarded as of scientific importance, is a fine example of literary treatment as applied to history. A little later came Robertson's works, more scholarly in their design, and written in a philosophic spirit and in highly polished language. The work of one historian of the time is great alike as a monument of learning and of literary faculty. The first instalment of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in 1766, the last in 1788. The grandeur of its conception, the orderly method of its construction, the learning it displays, and the unflagging pomp with which the historian presents his narrative, invest this book with a pre-eminence in English historical literature which remains beyond dispute. Other famous books of the time are Paley's theological works, Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, and Adam Smith's Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). Smith, while laying the foundations of political economy as a distinct science, treated theories in relation to actual facts; his book was at once accepted as a guide by statesmen, and largely inspired Pitt's economic policy. As a political writer Burke carried rhetoric to the sublimest heights in his Reflections on the French Revolution and some later works. Lord Chesterfield's Letters, many of them belonging to the early years of the reign, are admirable for their wit and elegance, but lack the special quality of the inimitable Letters of Horace Walpole, written on a countless number of topics, and treating them in a manner which, though somewhat affected, is easy and singularly appropriate to the writer's cast of mind. Of the Junius Letters enough has been said; they are political articles, not parts of a correspondence. Lastly, it would be unbecoming to omit here a notice, however cursory, of Walpole's valuable though not always trustworthy historical Memoirs.

The ecclesiastical architecture of the time was deplorable. Towards the end of the century it was affected by the revolt from classicism in literature; and a desire was manifested to desert the corrupt following of classical models for Gothic art, but it was unaccompanied by taste or knowledge, and the elder Wyatt's sins of destruction at Salisbury and elsewhere have made his name a by-word. In secular architecture things were better; Chambers, the architect of Somerset House, Robert Adam and his brothers, architects of the Adelphi buildings, and the younger Wood at Bath have left us works of considerable merit. In art, however, our period is chiefly memorable as that of the development of the English school of painting. Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of the great portrait painters of the world, was in high repute in 1760, was the first president of the Royal Academy, founded in 1768, and independently of his work did much to raise the appreciation of art, for he was universally respected. He started the famous literary club of which his friends, Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, and other distinguished men, were members. Scarcely inferior to Reynolds as a portrait-painter, Gainsborough invested his subjects with wonderful grace, and Romney, though not attaining to the height of these two, may be reckoned with them as a master of his art. Before the end of our period Hoppner and Lawrence were working in London and Raeburn in Edinburgh. The heavy debt which English landscape painting owes to Wilson, who lived neglected, has been acknowledged since his death. In that line Gainsborough was unsurpassed; he was wholly free from classical tradition and, as in his portrait work, interpreted nature as it presented itself to his own artistic sense. By 1800 Girtin had laid the foundation of genuine painting in water-colours, and Turner was entering on his earlier style, working under the influence of old masters. Humble life and animals were depicted by Morland, who was true to nature and a fine colourist. In the treatment of historical subjects classical tradition long held an undisputed sway; and the chief claim of West, once a fashionable artist, on our remembrance is that he broke away from it in his best picture, "The Death of Wolfe," painted in 1771, which represents his figures in the uniforms they wore instead of dressed as Romans, a revolt which caused no small stir.

Engraving on copper flourished, aided by the enterprise of Boydell, and wood-engraving was brought to perfection by the brothers Bewick. In sculpture, Flaxman, Nollekens, and Bacon did first-rate work. Music alone of the arts really interested the king. The public taste was stimulated by the establishment of Handel commemoration concerts; the opera was well attended, and church music was enriched by some distinguished composers. People of the upper and middle classes cared far more for art of all kinds than in the earlier half of the century: the rich bought the works of old Italian and French masters; exhibitions of art were thronged, and articles of virtu found a ready sale.

VOYAGES OF DISCOVERY.

During the earlier years of the reign much interest in natural science was aroused, probably through French influence. England soon came to the front in scientific investigation. Among the principal contributors to this movement were Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, and Black, of latent heat; Cavendish, the investigator of air and water; Sir William Herschel, the astronomer, who spent most of his life in England; Hutton, the father of British geological science; Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist; Hunter, the "founder of scientific surgery"; and Jenner, who in 1798 announced the protective power of vaccination against small-pox. Science was aided by voyages of discovery, some of them of the highest future importance in the history of the world, and in the extension of the British empire. Between 1764 and 1768 come Commodore Byron's fruitless voyage round the world, and the discovery of a large number of islands in the South Pacific by Captains Wallis and Carteret. Cook's three great voyages were made between 1768 and 1779. In the course of them he sailed round New Zealand, explored the east coast of Australia and the new Hebrides, discovered New Caledonia and the Sandwich islands, and attempted to find a passage from the North Pacific round the north of the American continent. In 1780 an expedition under Captain Bligh, sent to transport bread-fruit trees from Otaheite to the West Indies for acclimatisation, ended in the famous mutiny on board his ship, the Bounty. To the last years of the century belong the voyages of Bass and Flinders in Australian waters. Meanwhile Mackenzie descended the river which bears his name to the Arctic ocean, and in 1770 Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, reached the sources of the Blue Nile.

Between 1760 and 1801 the national Church, the proper instrument of national reformation, was passing through a period of transition. Its vitality was somewhat injured by its controversy with the deists, and still more by the action of the state. It was a powerful political engine and as such it was used by statesmen. Convocations remained silenced, and Church preferments were made to serve political ends and were regarded both by clergy and laity as little more than desirable offices. Clergymen begged bishoprics and deaneries of Newcastle with unblushing importunity, sometimes even before the men they aspired to succeed had breathed their last. Neither they, nor the ministers who treated Church patronage as a means of strengthening their party, were necessarily careless about religion. Newcastle and Hardwicke, for example, were religious men, and the personal piety of some preferment-seeking bishops is unquestioned. It was a matter in which the Church was neither better nor worse than the age. The ecclesiastical system was disorganised by plurality and non-residence; the dignified clergy as a whole were worldly minded, and the greater number of the rest were wretchedly poor. The Church was roused to a sense of its duty to society by methodism and evangelicalism, two movements for a time closely connected, though after 1784 methodism became a force outside the church. By 1760 the persecution to which John Wesley and his fellow-workers had sometimes been exposed was over, and methodism was gaining ground. It very slightly touched aristocratic society, chiefly through the efforts of the Countess of Huntingdon, who, in spite of her quarrel with Wesley's party, must be regarded as one of the leaders of the movement; its influence on the labouring class, specially in large towns and in the mining districts, was strong, and it gained a considerable hold on people of the middle class.