The most prominent names in the English theological literature of the eighteenth century are those of Bishop Butler (1692–1752) and William Paley (1743-1805). The former is more remarkable for the severe and coherent logic with which he demonstrates his conclusions; the latter for his consummate skill in popularizing the abstruser arguments of his predecessor. Butler's principal work is The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (181). In it he examines the resemblance between the existence and attributes of God as proved by arguments drawn from the works of nature, and shows that existence, and those attributes to be in no way incompatible with the notions conveyed to us by revelation.

Paley's books are numerous, and all excellent; the principal of them are Elements of Moral and Political Philosophy, the Hora Paulina (225), the Evidences of Christianity, and the production of his old age, the Treatise on Natural Theology. It will be seen from the titles of these works, over what an extent of moral and theological philosophy Paley's mind had travelled. For clearness, animation, and easy grace, his style has rarely been equalled.

Among the crowd of less noticeable writers whose names might be mentioned in this chapter, but few produced works that still have peculiar value. Lord Lyttleton published A History of Henry II. which is noteworthy as being the most elaborate work yet written on one of the most momentous reigns in English history. The Elements of Criticism by Henry Home, Lord Kames, and The Philosophy of Rhetoric by George Campbell, in spite of many publications on the same subjects since their time, continue to be standard authorities in their respective departments.

THE

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY.

HE mechanical perfection of the poetry of Pope and his school was so generally applauded that every common versifier imitated its tricks of melody and its neat antitheses. But a thoroughly artificial spirit cannot satisfy the demands of poetry. Even while Pope swayed the sceptre, there were indications of a disposition to seek for themes in a wider sphere. Fancy was yearning for exercise in the fields of nature, and for the excitement of emotions. In Matthew Greene's poem The Spleen, in The Minstrel of James Beattie, and in The Grave, by Robert Blair, this tendency is perceptible, and may be ascribed to a weariness coming from repeti. tions of far-off echoes of Pope.

James Thomson (1700-1748) was an unconscious leader in that great revolution of popular taste and sentiment which supplanted the artificial by what is known as the romantic type in literature. He stands between the poets of the first and the poets of the third generation in the eighteenth century. In his fervid descriptions he enters a realm of poetry unknown to Pope; but he does not reach the poetry of emotion and passion in which Burns and later poets found their inspiration. Thomson was born in a rural corner of Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, and it was intended that he should be a preacher; but in the theological class-room he was so imaginative in his interpretation and paraphrase of scripture that he was cautioned by his professor against the danger of exercising his poetic faculty in the pulpit. This caution diverted him from his calling, and turned him into the paths of literature. In 1725 he went to London, carrying with him an unfinished sketch of his poem on Winter (228). After much discouragement he succeeded in selling it for three guineas, and in winning a handsome purse from the gentleman to whom he had dedicated it with flattering phrases. The poem was received with favor. Summer was published in 1727; and Thomson then issued proposals for the completion of the cycle of The Sea12

sons by writing of Spring and Autumn (227). In 1731 he travelled in France, Switzerland and Italy as tutor to the son of the Lord Chancellor, and on his return to England in 1733, was appointed to a sinecure office in the Court of Chancery. Upon losing this office the Prince of Wales honored him with a pension, and a lucrative position was assigned him by the King. He purchased a snug cottage near Richmond, and lived in modest luxury. It was a genuine pleasure for him to live. He was of an extremely kind and generous disposition, making himself and all about him comfortable. In lazy leisure he carried on his literary work until his death in the forty-eighth year of his age. During his happy retirement he composed The Castle of Indolence (229), the most enchanting of the many imitations of Spenser's style. His easy, lazy, daily life breathed itself into this charming poem, and favored a display of the finest qualities of his poetic genius. But The Seasons is the corner-stone of Thomson's literary fame. In plan and in treatment it is original. Its description of the phenomena of nature during an English year is minute, and therefore it is a work much read by foreigners. The blank verse, though seldom showing any of the Miltonic grandeur, is rich and harmonious. Occasionally the style is pompous. In literary finish The Castle of Indolence is superior to The Seasons. The allegory of the enchanted "Land of Drowsihead," in which the unhappy victims of Indolence find themselves hopeless captives, is relieved with occasional touches of a sly and pleasant humor, as in those passages where Thomson has drawn portraits of himself and of his friends.

The career of William Collins (1721-1759) was brief and unhappy. He exhibited from very early years the strong poetical powers of a genius which, ripened by practice and experience, would have made him the first lyrical writer of his age. But his ambition was fitful. He led a life of projects and dissipation; and the first shock of literary disappointment drove him to despondency, despondency to indulgence and indulgence to insanity. His first publication was a series of Eclogues, transferring the usual sentiments of pastoral verse to the scenery and manners of the East. Although these eclogues exhibit traces of vivid imagery and melodious verse, the real genius of Collins must be looked for in his Odes. Judged by them, he will be found entitled to a very high place. For true warmth of coloring, power of personification,

and dreamy sweetness of harmony, no English poet had till then appeared that could be compared to him. The ode entitled The Passions is frequently quoted; and many of the less popular ones, as that addressed to Fear (231), to Pity, to Simplicity, and that On the Poetical Character, contain happy strokes, sometimes expressed in wonderfully laconic language, and in singularly vivid portraiture. Some of the smaller and less ambitious lyrics, as the Verses to the Memory of Thomson, the Dirge in Cymbeline, and the exquisite verses How Sleep the Brave, are destined to a more enduring fame. All the qualities of Collins's finest thought and expression will be found united in the lovely little Ode to Evening, consisting merely of a few stanzas in blank verse, but so subtly harmonized that we may read them a thousand times without observing the absence of rhyme.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771), a man of vast and varied acquirements, whose life was devoted to the cultivation of letters, was greater than any former exclusively lyric poet of England. He received his education at Eton, and afterwards settled in learned retirement at Cambridge, where he became Professor of History in 1768. He acquired a high poetical reputation by his beautiful Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (234), published in 1747. This was followed, at intervals, by the Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard (233), the Pindaric Odes, and his other brilliant productions. His industry was untiring, and his learning undoubtedly great; for he had pushed his researches far beyond the usual limits of ancient classical philology, and was deeply versed in the romance literature of the Middle Ages, in modern French and Italian, and had studied the then almost unknown departments of Scandinavian and Celtic poetry. Many passages of his works are a mosaic of thought and imagery borrowed from Pindar, from the choral portions of the Attic tragedy, and from the majestic lyrics of the Italian poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the fragments are fused into one solid body by the intense flame of a powerful and fervent imagination. His finest lyric compositions are the Odes entitled The Bard, that on the Progress of Poesy (235), the Installation Ode on the Duke of Grafton's election to the Chancellorship of the University, and the short but truly noble Ode to Adversity. The Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard is a masterpiece from beginning to end. The thoughts indeed are obvious enough, but the dignity with which they are expressed, the immense range of allu

268

AKEN SIDE, SHENSTONE,

WARTON.

sion and description with which they are illustrated, and the finished grace of the language and versification in which they are embodied, give to this work somewhat of that inimitable perfection of design and execution which is seen in an antique statue. In The Bard, starting from the picturesque idea of a Welsh poet and patriot contemplating the victorious invasion of his country by Edward I., he passes in prophetic review the panorama of English History, from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. In the odes entitled The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, Gray borrowed his materials from the Scandinavian legends. The tone of the Norse poetry is perhaps not very faithfully reproduced; but these early attempts to revive the rude and archaic grandeur of the Eddas deserve grateful appreciation.

Mark Akenside (1721–1770), like Arbuthnot and Smollett, was a physician as well as a writer. His chief work is the philosophical poem entitled The Pleasures of the Imagination (232), in which he seeks to investigate and illustrate the emotions excited by beautiful objects in art and nature. The philosophical merit of his theories, indeed, is very often small, but the beauty of the imagery and language will ever secure for this lofty and thoughtful work the admiration of those readers who can content themselves with elevated thoughts, without looking for passages of strong feeling. Few English poets since Milton have been more deeply inspired by the spirit of classical antiquity.

A passing notice must suffice for William Shenstone (1714–1763), whose popularity, once considerable, has now given place to oblivion (230). His pleasing and original poem the Schoolmistress deserves to retain a place in every collection of English verse. This is a poem in the Spenserian stanza, and in antique diction. With a delightful mixture of quaint playfulness and tender description, it paints the dwelling, the character, and the pursuits of an old village dame who keeps a rustic day school.

The two brothers Joseph Warton (1722-1800) and Thomas Warton (1728-1790) were the sons of a Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and both brothers, especially the younger, deserve a place in the annals of our literature. Thomas, who was poet-laureate from 1785 until his death, rendered great service to letters by his agreeable but unfinished History of English Poetry. That work unfortunately comes to an abrupt termination just as the author is about