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St. Omers, and also rendered into Italian and German. As a prose-writer Addison may claim the merit of correcting our language, and effecting a revolution in our literature by modelling a pure English style; and he must be allowed the still higher praise of having elevated the taste and increased the piety, philanthropy, and refinement of his age. In Queen Anne's blessed time poetry was not, as now, like virtue, its own reward. It had its solid and tangible emoluments. For this single simile of Addison's in the "Battle of Blenheim," he was made Commissioner of Appeals on the spot, the Lord Treasurer's admiration of the poem being so enthusiastic that he could not even wait for its completion before rewarding the poet for these lucky lines,

"So, when an angel, by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia passed,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast,
And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm."

Smooth and elegant as these lines are, we have, I think, seen better work of the same sort done for less pay; it is, however, no doubt, reassuring to be informed that our battles are heaven-directed, however questionable we find the assertion.

The dramatic literature of this period was, like its general poetry, polished and artificial. In tragedy the highest name is that of Southerne, who, though his language is feeble compared with that of the great dramatists, and his general style low and unimpressive, may claim with Otway the power of touching the passions. Addison's "Cato," it may be observed, is more properly a classic poem than a drama.

The vigorous exposure of the immorality of the stage

by Jeremy Collier, and the essays of Steele and Addison now improving the taste and moral feeling of the public, a partial reformation took place in the drama, which the Restoration had introduced; but even at the representation of these improved plays it is asserted that ladies still had occasion to wear masks, as they usually did on the first days of acting a new play. In comedy the highest name of this period is that of Congreve, born in Ireland, 1670. He was of a good family, studied law, but began early to write for the stage. His "Old Bachelor," produced in his twenty-first year, was acted with great applause. His life was a happy and prosperous one. A complaint in the eyes afflicted him in his latter days, which finally terminated in blindness. He died in 1729.

Dryden complimented Congreve as "one whom every muse and grace adorned;" and Pope dedicated to him his translation of the Iliad.

We must not omit one remarkable incident in the life of Congreve, his apparently blameless intimacy with the Duchess of Marlborough, at whose table he sat daily, regaling her Highness with his conversation and amiably assisting in her household management. On his death he left the bulk of his fortune, amounting to about ten thousand pounds, to this eccentric lady. Her Grace laid out her friend's bequest in a superb diamond necklace, which she wore in honor of him; and report says she honored his memory in ways much more extraordinary. It is affirmed that her Ladyship had a statue of the deceased poet in ivory, which moved by clockwork, and was placed daily at her table; and moreover that the good woman had a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that to render the illusion complete, the feet of this doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from the gout.

Posterity has not awarded to Congreve the high place in literature which the glittering artificial school allowed him. Brilliant in dialogue and repartee, exuberant in dramatic incident and character, he has still but few charms to the genuine lovers of the natural and the true, and is not recommended by any moral purpose or sentiment. One line in his tragedy of the "Mourning Bride" has been often quoted:

"Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast."

The age now under notice derives perhaps greater lustre from its essayists than from its poets and dramatists. Papers containing news had been established in London and other large cities, since the time of the Civil War, but the idea of issuing a periodical sheet, commenting on the events of private life and the dispositions of ordinary men, was never before entertained either in England or elsewhere. The credit of beginning this new and peculiar kind of literature is due to Sir Richard Steele, who first conceived the idea of attacking the vices and foibles of the age through the medium of a lively periodical paper, and accordingly commenced the publication of the "Tatler," a small sheet designed to appear three times a week, a part of each paper- to conciliate the news-lover -being devoted to public and political intelligence. The "Tatler" was in 1711 merged in the more celebrated "Spectator" (subsequently superseded by the "Guardian"), which appeared every morning in the shape of a single leaf and invariably without any admixture of politics, and was received at the breakfast-tables of most persons of taste then living in the metropolis. Steele contributed the greater part of the light and humorous sketches; Addison most of the articles in which there is any grave reflection or elevated feeling. The beneficial influence of

this form of literature on the morality, piety, manners, and intelligence of the British people has been extensive and permanent; and to the circulation of these papers may also be ascribed the beginning of a just taste in the fields of fancy and picturesque beauty. "From the perusal of these essays," says Dr. Drake, "that large body of the people included in the middle class of society first derived their capability of judging of the merits of a refined writer; and the nation at large gradually from this epoch became entitled to the distinguishing appellations of literary and critical."

Notwithstanding the high excellence which must be attributed to the British essayists, we cannot accord to them that philosophic depth, that comprehensiveness and originality which since the age of Queen Anne has come into request. And though the poets of the age may have corrected the indecencies introduced at the Restoration, they are deficient in force or greatness of fancy and in those natural graces of pathos and enthusiasm which are the life-blood of true poetry.

CHAPTER XII.

YOUNG, THOMSON, GOLDSMITH, GRAY, MINOR POETS,

AND COWPER.

HE fifty-three years between 1727 and 1780, embrac

THE

ing the reign of George II. and a portion of the reign of George III., was not marked by such striking features of originality or vigor as some of the preceding eras; yet it produced more men of letters, as well as more men of science, than any epoch of similar extent in the literary history of England. It was also a time during which greater progress was made in diffusing literature among the people at large than had been made perhaps throughout all the ages that went before it.

The publication of Percy's "Reliques" and Warton's "History of Poetry," by directing public attention to the early writers and showing the powerful effects which could be produced by simple narrative and natural emotion in verse, had sown the seed which was to germinate in the next generation, when Cowper should complete what Thomson had begun. A sort of successor, under the reign of Pope, of the Donnes and Cowleys of a former age, was the author of the "Night Thoughts," having "Donne's conceits without his subtle fancy, the quibbles and contortions of Cowley without his elegance, playfulness, and gayety."

Dr. Edward Young, born in 1684, was educated at Oxford; and in 1712 he commenced public life as a court

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