modern research has neither set aside nor threatened to set aside." He was scholarly, unprejudiced, and interesting. "Whatever else is read, Gibbon must be read too." And he will always be read, both for his facts and his interpretations of facts, and for his richly colored and splendidly forceful style. James Boswell, as the historian of one man, ought here to be mentioned. He wrote a Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. It is the general custom to speak lightly of Boswell, but, strangely enough, the detractor is quite likely to say, and say truly, that his book is one of the best among a dozen or less of the greatest books in the world. It is a very wonderful biography of a most remarkable man. Perhaps Defoe might be mentioned as a comic historian; The Political History of the Devil is his book in this field. Current history met a satirist in this book, at least. The eighteenth century in America. In eighteenth-century America, makers of history were doing some important writing in the English language. In that century we find Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography; the state papers of George Washington; the Declaration of Independence, written chiefly by Thomas Jefferson; the papers of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist; and Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, written in reply to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution. Also there were the writings of Jonathan Edwards, particularly his Freedom of the Will. This book has given Edwards the reputation of having been a great metaphysician. Europeans are divided as to our greatest thinker, opinion running between Hamilton and Edwards. Very much more attention than this should be given by the student to these American writers, but it is the chief purpose of this book to present the work of writers in Great Britain. QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. What were the leading features of eighteenth-century life and thought? 2. Its principal authors may be grouped under what heads? 3. Into how many periods may the poetry of the eighteenth century be divided, and who do you think was the chief poet in each period? 4. What place does Pope hold among English poets? 5. Learn one poem by Thomas Gray or one by William Collins, and recite it. 6. What is " romance"? What does "romantic" mean? 7. Learn one poem by Robert Burns or one by William Blake, and recite it. 8. Find out all you can about the Lyrical Ballads published jointly by Coleridge and Wordsworth. 9. Who were the foremost English dramatists of the eighteenth century, and what plays of that time are often staged to-day? 10. What essay which you have read of those written during the eighteenth century do you like best, and why? 11. Describe the work of Swift; of Dr. Johnson; of Edmund Burke. 12. What is the business of the novel? When did it first begin to appear as a great type of literature? 13. Characterize Goldsmith, Swift, Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. 14. What do you know of the work of Gibbon, of Hume, and of Adam Smith? 15. Tell all you can concerning the literature which was being produced in America during the eighteenth century. POPE, GRAY, READING LIST FOR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY POETRY The Rape of the Lock, and Essay on Man. In Selections from Pope, edited by Edward Bliss Reed. Elegy in a Country Churchyard. In Gray's Poems, edited by John Bradshaw. WILLIAM COLLINS, Ode to Evening. In The Poems of Collins, edited by Christopher Stone. WILLIAM COWPER, The Diverting History of John Gilpin. In Cowper's Shorter Poems, edited by W. T. Webb. BURNS, WILLIAM BLAKE, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, GOLDSMITH, ADDISON, SWIFT, BURKE, BUNYAN, DEFOE, SWIFT, GOLDSMITH, RICHARDSON, ADAM SMITH, The Cotter's Saturday Night. In Selections from The Tiger. In Lyrical Poems of Blake, edited by John The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In Christabel and Lines composed above Tintern Abbey. In Selected Poems, edited by Clara L. Thomson. (See next period.) DRAMA She Stoops to Conquer. Edited by J. M. Dent. ESSAY Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. Edited by Zelma Gray. Conciliation with the American Colonies. Edited by NOVEL The Pilgrim's Progress. Winston's "Illustrated Handy Robinson Crusoe. "Everyman's Library." Gulliver's Travels. "Everyman's Library." The Vicar of Wakefield. Winston's "Illustrated Handy Pamela. "Everyman's Library." The Adventures of Joseph Andrews. Edited by George ECONOMICS AND HISTORY Wealth of Nations. "Everyman's Library." Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. "Everyman's BOSWELL, BIOGRAPHY Life of Dr. Johnson. "Everyman's Library." HELPFUL BOOKS ON THE PERIOD The Age of Pope, John Dennis. (George Bell & Sons.) Eighteenth Century Verse, Margaret Lynn. (The Macmillan Company.) English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, H. A. Beers. (Henry Holt & Co.) Cambridge History of English Literature, Vols. IX and X. (Cambridge University Press.) Life of Dr. Johnson, James Boswell. (J. M. Dent & Co.) Life of Addison, W. J. Courthope. In "English Men of Letters” Series. (The Macmillan Company.) English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, W. M. Thackeray. (Smith, Elder, & Co.) The Development of the English Novel, W. F. Cross. (The Macmillan Company.) The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, W. L. Phelps. (Ginn & Co.) English Literature of the Eighteenth Century, T. S. Perry. (Harper's.) CHAPTER VI THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY 1798-1837 I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS Energy, freedom, and poetry. The nineteenth was a wonderful century. In nothing was it more wonderful than in the production of literature. The achievements of statesmanship, of commerce and industry, and of scientific invention grow to be commonplace not long after their practical use becomes general, but the achievements within the field of writing which are worthy to be termed literary, increase in power to stimulate admiration and in power to be of value in the conduct of everyday life. "By nothing is England so great as by her poetry," has become a truism. It is England's poetry that is distinctive in the literary field. "Genius," said Matthew Arnold, " is mainly an affair of energy, and poetry is mainly an affair of genius; therefore, a nation whose spirit is characterized by energy may well be eminent in poetry; and we have Shakespeare." He goes on to say, "And what that energy, which is the life of genius, above everything demands and insists upon, is freedom; entire independence of all authority, prescription, and routine, the fullest room to expand as it will." The days in which England's greatest names in poetry occur, the names of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, and Browning, are days in which England's citizens enjoyed their greatest freedom |