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LEFT ENGLISH LITERATURE 27 ENGLISH LITERATURE commencement of the so-called Augus- tan age in English literature. During it, nowever, no greater poet appeared than Pope (1688-1744). Against the formal limits of his conception of poetry signs of reaction were apparent in the verse of Thomson (1700-1748), Gray (1716-1771), Collins (1720-1759), Gold- smith (1728-1774), and in the produc- tions of Macpherson and Chatterton. The poets Prior (1664-1721), Gay (1688-1732), and Ambrose Phillips (1671-1749), inherited from the later 17th century. Gay being memorable in connection with English opera; and there were a large number of small but respectable poets — including Parnell, Shenstone, Blair, Akenside, Anstey, Beattie, and Allan Ramsay. It was in prose that the chief development of the 18th century was found. Defoe (1661- 1731) and Swift (1667-1745) led the Way in fiction and prose satire; Steele (1671-1729) and Addison (1672-1719), working on a suggestion of Defoe, estab- lished the periodical essay; Richardson (1689-1761), Fielding (1707-1754), Smollett (1721-1771), and Sterne raised the novel to sudden perfection. Gold- smith also falls into the fictional group as well as into those of the poets and the essayists. Johnson (1709-1784) exer- cised during the latter part of his life the power of a literary dictator, with Boswell (1740-1795) as literary depend- ent. The other chief prose writers were Bishop Berkeley (1685-1753), Ar- buthnot (1675-1735), Shaftesbury (1671- 1713), Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Burke, the historians David Hume (1711- 1776), William Robertson (1721-1793), Edrnund Gibbon (1737-1794) ; the poli- tical writers Wilkes and Junius, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) ; the philosophical writers Humey Bentham (1749-1832), and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), the scholars Bentley (1662-1742), Sir Wil- liam Jones (1746-1794), and Richard Porson (1759-1808); the theologians At- terbury, Butler (1692-1752), Warbur- ton, and Faley, and some inferior play- wrights, of whom Rowe, John Home, CoUey Gibber, Colman the elder, Foote, and Sheridan were the most important. With the French Revolution, or a few years earlier, the modem movement in literature began. The departure from the old traditions, traceable in Gray and Collins, was more clearly exhibited in the last years of the century in Cowper (1731-1800) and Burns (1759-1796), and was developed and perfected in the hands of Blake (1757-1828), Bowles (1762-1850), and the "Lake poets" Wordsworth (1770-1850), Coleridge (1772-1834), and Southey (1774-1843); but there were at first many survivals from the poetic manner of the 17th cen- tury, such as Erasmus Darwin (1731- 1802), Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819), Ro- bert Bloomfield (1766-1823), and Samuel Rogers (1763-1855). Among the earlier poets of the century, also, were George Crabbe (1754-1832), Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Hogg (1772-1835), Camp- bell (1777-1844), James Montgomery, Mrs. Hemans Byran, Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall") Milman, L. E. Lan- don, Joanna Baillie, Robert Montgomery. A more important group was that of Byron (1788-1824), Shelley (1792-1822), and Keats (1796-1821), with which may be associated the names of Leigh Hunt (1784-1869), Thomas Moore (1779- 1852), and Landor (1775-1864). Among the earlier writers of fiction there were several women of note, such as Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), and Jane Aus- ten (1775-1817). The greatest name in fiction was unquestionably that of Scott. Other prose writers were Mackintosh, Malthus, Hallam, James Mill, Southey, Robert Hall, John Foster, Thomas Chal- mers, Hannah More, Cobbett, William Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Lord Brougham. In the literature after 1830 poetry included as its chief names Praed, Hood, Aytoun, Lord Houghton, Sidney Dobell, Alexander Smith, Philip James Bailey, William Allington, Eliza- beth Barrett Browning, Coventry Pat- more, Lord Lytton, ("Owen Meredith"), Arthur Hugh Clough, Edwin Arnold, Matthew Arnold, Dante G. Rossetti, William Morris, Lewis Morris, Swin- burne, William Watson, Kipling, and last and gi-eatest, Tennyson and Brown- ing. A brilliant list of novelists for the same period includes Mar- ryat. Lord Lytton, Ainsworth, Benja- min Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), Dickens, Thackeray, Charles and Henry Kingsley, Charlotte Bronte, Lover, Lever, Wilkie Collins, George Macdonald, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Anthony and Augustus Trollope, William Black, Thomas Hardy, R. D. Blackmore, George Meredith, Conan Doyle, Hall Caine, Robert Louis Stevenson, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Craik (Miss Mulock), Mrs. Oli- phant, Miss Yonge, Miss Thackeray, Mrs. Humphry Ward, J. M. Barrie, An- thony Hope Hawkins, and others. To the historical and biographical list be- long Alison, Macaulay, Buckle, Carlyle, Grote, Milman, Froude, Lecky, S. R. Gardiner, Kinglake, John Richard Green, E. A. Freeman, Charles Knight, Dean Stanley, David Masson, John Morley, Leslie Stephen, Justin McCarthy. Prom- inent among the theological writers were Dr. Newman, Whately, Augustus and Julius Hare, Trench, Stanley, Maurice,