[179.] Two other principles of this book should be noted: (1) that all power originates in the people; and (2) that the object of all government is the common good. Here evidently is a democratic doctrine, which abolishes the divine right of kings; but Hobbes immediately destroys democracy by another doctrine,--that the power given by the people to the ruler could not be taken away. Hence the Royalists could use the book to justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people had chosen them. This part of the book is in direct opposition to Milton's Defense of the English People.
[180.] Locke's Treatises on Government should also be mentioned, for they are of profound interest to American students of history and political science. It was from Locke that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution drew many of their ideas, and even some of their most striking phrases. "All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights"; "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; "the origin and basis of government is in the consent of the governed,"--these and many more familiar and striking expressions are from Locke. It is interesting to note that he was appointed to draft a constitution for the new province of Carolina; but his work was rejected,--probably because it was too democratic for the age in which he lived.
[181.] A few slight changes and omissions from the original text, as given in Wheatley's edition of Pepys (London, 1892, 9 vols.), are not indicated in these brief quotations.
[182.] The first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, appeared in London in 1702.
[183.] See Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century.
[184.] Addison's "Campaign" (1704), written to celebrate the battle of Blenheim.
[185.] Great writers in every age, men like Shakespeare and Milton, make their own style. They are therefore not included in this summary. Among the minor writers also there are exceptions to the rule; and fine feeling is often manifest in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Herrick.
[186.] We have endeavored here simply to show the meaning of terms in general use in our literature; but it must be remembered that it is impossible to classify or to give a descriptive name to the writers of any period or century. While "classic" or "pseudo-classic" may apply to a part of eighteenth-century literature, every age has both its romantic and its classic movements. In this period the revolt against classicism is shown in the revival of romantic poetry under Gray, Collins, Burns, and Thomson, and in the beginning of the English novel under Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. These poets and novelists, who have little or no connection with classicism, belong chronologically to the period we are studying. They are reserved for special treatment in the sections following.
[187.] Pope's satires, for instance, are strongly suggested in Boileau; his Rape of the Lock is much like the mock-heroic Le Lutrin; and the "Essay on Criticism," which made him famous, is an English edition and improvement of L'Art Poétique. The last was, in turn, a combination of the Ars Poetica of Horace and of many well-known rules of the classicists.
[188.] These are the four kinds of spirits inhabiting the four elements, according to the Rosicrucians,--a fantastic sect of spiritualists of that age. In the dedication of the poem Pope says he took the idea from a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis.