Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/133

* ENGLISH LITERATURE. 1! 1 ENGLISH LITERATURE. contrast, in both person and manner, is dial, between these genial humorists and the moody Dean of Saint Patrick's. Swift must always be remembered as a man of great force of mind and character, set awry by disappointment and bodily suffering. Conscious of high endowments, he was inspired by his sense of injustice and neglect to write Gulliver's Travels, the classic of injured merit and of angry revolt against the shallow discriminations of society and government. Uis morbid spirit became terrible in the intensity of its hate for mankind. With Swift the style was the man — fearless, aggressive, sturdy. Yel he made warm friends and inspired a singular devo- tion in two women; beneath that rugged exterior there must, have been a naturally tender heart. which would have leaped to meet a brotherly recognition. For homely simplicity and directness, the nervous style of Defoe at his best has rarely been excelled. His numerous pamphlets and his verse are practically unknown to the general reader; but Robinson Crusoe, the classic of the race of boys, is a masterpiece of adventure. His other stories, little read, differ from the modern novel in the absence of a plot, but. resemble a special phase of it in being written with a pur- pose — in his ease to enforce the morality of the middle class, to which he belonged and for which he wrote. Sterne's chief work, Tristram Shandy, is as far as Defoe's talcs from possessing the co- herence and the regulated progress of events which mark the modern novel ; if is capricious and uneven, while, unlike Defoe, Sterne de- liberately rebels against the moral standards which Addison, for instance, had enforced on his generation. But his humor, which has caused him to be classed now with Rabelais, now with Cervantes, his finished sentimcntalism. as dis- tinguished from genuine sentiment, and his power of creating characters endowed with an absolute reality — all these unite to give him a conspicuous and very special place. The novel proper began with Richardson, though it in probable that he was unconscious of creating a ifv literary genre, which was des- tined to overshadow all others in multiplicity and popularity. His method seems to have meant to him a sort of expansion of the drama ; he calls Clarissa Earlowe 'a dramatic narrative.' There is in him much of the "tedious prolixity of the French romances: but he possessed the faculty of interesting the reader, partly by a quality which has lost its appeal for us. but to which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for example, bears abundant witness — his realistic fidelity to the types of character and the manners of his own time. But even had Richardson no merits of his own. we should still be grateful to him for pro- voking Fielding to enter upon the writing of fiction. Fielding's variety of experience, his ap- prenticeship in the drama and in periodical litera- ture, his accurate observation, united with his native capacity in all kinds of literary endeavor. admirably fitted him for the magnificent scope of the novel. Great in plot, he had the power to marshal all details and to conduct them master- fully to the denouement. He is another of the great humorists, and he is still modern. Before Tom Jones: appeared, a new writer of fiction had published Roderick Random. Smollett had much the same reason for cynicism as Swift, he fancied, and the accent of his work is pessimistic. He is said to have had great luei the develop- ment of ticl ion I han anj ql hei •■■ ritei of hi I His work, however, smacks of the fai awaj period "i Cervantes and l.e Sage, and doc- not enthral like that of Fielding. Goldsmith's charming idyllic story of The 1 Icai oj Wakefield appeared in 1766, I. winning Goethe at our,. | L i ince won the world by its "happy reinforcement of the theme of domestic Miss and tranquillity." Sharply contrasted with it- grateful simplicity is John son's Rasselas, the style of which is characteris tically ponderous. It is interesting at least as the -oh' attempt oi the great autocrat in a form for which his aptitude was anything hut conspi ous. Here also belong Miss Burney'a Evt and Cecilia, both of which are said to have been as eagerly received as Scott's work was subse- quently to be. Assuredly it would be a tribute to any author to have Johnson, Burke, and Rey- nolds become so far absorbed that they were un- willing to put I he hook down, t lie t wo latter spend ing I he whoh' night on it. Here, ton, should be n tioned Godwin, for his Caleb Williams, as well as for his abstract philosophic work; Hoi Walpole, for his Cusil,- ,, Otranto no less than for his Anecdotes of Painting, Memoirs, and -n premely fascinating letters; kiwis, for his Monk; Mrs. Inehhald. for her Simple Story; and Mrs. I'adeliffo, for her .1/ i/.sleries of Udolpho. The first of all this company in sheer power is easily Henry Fielding, while for grace as inimi- table as it is distinctive Goldsmith leads; Miss Burney excelled in the depiction of domestic char acter; with Walpole begins the novel of mystery; from Lewis and -Mrs. Radeliffe we receive those 'tales of terror' which were afterwards wrought out with such consummate craftsmanship by Pi and with Godwin the 'novel with a purpose' enters upon its long career. It should be noted that, here woman first appears conspicuously in English literature; and not alone in fiction, as becomes evident when we consider Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Mary Wollstonecraft. Great as was the eighteenth century in prose, its claims upon us are yet greater in the field of poetry. The two dominant figures of the period were, indeed. Pope and Johnson; but their rigid and sometimes absurd classicism was in their own day beginning to be superseded by the romantic revival, whose culmination constitutes the brightest chapter in our literary history after the Elizabethans. For their contemporaries they were the overshadowing poets. In Dr. .Johnson we find a man who. by virtue of his vigorous personality, even more than Dryden and Tope, stood out from his age. What he lacked in intrinsic literary preeminence he supplied by a tyrannous dictatorship. His impetuous prefa lory 'Sir!' was sufficient to intimidate, if not to convince, and his reign as literary lawgiver ended only with his life For all his versatility, he i- now largely a literary memory, and survives rather as a pensonality. His Lircn of the /' discovers gleams of genuine critical insight, hut, on account of ingrained prejudice, his judg- ments arc untrustworthy. His "Vanity of Hu- man Wishes" and his "London" are good imita- tions of the Popian satire, but they must suffer by comparison. The play Irene is known to few. The Rambler and the Idler are heavy success of the periodical essay made so popular by Steele and Addison. But the preface to his 8hak< speare is deservedly famous for its uncommon good