BURKE (1729-1797)

Edmund Burke was born in 1729, at Dublin. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1748, and soon took up the study of law in the Middle Temple, London. His interest in literature developed early in life; in 1756 the Inquiry concerning the Sublime and the Beautiful marked his appearance on the stage of letters. Five years later he was appointed secretary to the Lord Deputy of Ireland; from this time until his death he was actively engaged in governmental work. His political career was of the noblest; although never holding a high office, he was recognized as the unofficial leader of the Whig party, and virtually shaped the policies of the nation during the latter part of his life. From

1790 to 1797 he was concerned with France; his first great interests, however, had been America and India. He had entered Parliament in 1766, and had at once taken up the question of England's attitude towards her American colonies. Burke understood America better than anyone else in Parliament; he was passionately devoted to the cause of human justice; and he pleaded for conciliation with America not only because he foresaw that it alone would save the empire, but because it was the only righteous course to pursue. Burke failed; England went her way under George III and Lord North, and the colonies were lost. He then turned his attention to India, studying it as carefully as he had America, vizualizing with the imagination of a poet the results of English oppression, and finally denouncing the English system in a series of attacks that culminated in the impeachment (1787-95) of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General. The publication in 1790 of the Reflections on the Revolution in France marks the beginning of his hostility towards French republicanism. The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), and the Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796-97), continued in the same vein, and established Burke as the great champion of conservatism, the upholder of the established order of things against the forces that were making for destruction.

Matthew Arnold speaks of Burke as a man who "saturated politics with thought." It is well known that as an orator he was ineffective, and that the qualities which make his essays so powerful detracted from his success on the floor of the House. But he could afford to give up the success of the moment for the more lasting triumphs he has won. His was the noblest prose of the century in England; massive, pregnant with ideas, yet always clear; logically concise, yet vibrant with an emotion that colors his paragraphs as a kindred emotion colors the great utterances of Lincoln.

Lord Morley's Life, in the E. M. L., is a good biography of Burke. Various editions of his speeches are readily accessible; the Select Works, edited by E. J. Payne (Clarendon Press, 3 vols.), is excellent.

THE PRECURSORS OF ROMANTICISM

The poets thus roughly and somewhat inaccurately classed together are more important to the student of English literary history as a group than as individuals. They wrote during the years when the ideals established by Dryden and Pope and maintained by Johnson were dominant in England, and they mark the gradual turning of the tide towards Romanticism. At no time before Wordsworth was the dominance of the PseudoClassicists seriously challenged; but that a rew spirit was abroad even during the hey-day of the old order, the work of these men, and of Gray and Cowper, is ample testimony. In freedom from literary rule and precept, in choice of forms and material which if not actually new were at least comparatively new to the eighteenth century, in their unusual attitude towards nature and man, and in their instinct for self-expression, these men unmistakably foreshadowed the age of Wordsworth and Byron.

Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), a Scotchman, did much to continue the old tradition of Scottish song and ballad, and furnished Burns with models for some of his best work. James Thomson (1700-48), was also born in Scotland, but went up to London in 1725. Here he attained renown as the author of The Seasons (1730), a descriptive poem portraying country life during the changing year. Both the material and the form-blank verse-were new to the eighteenth century; still more unusual was The Castle of Indolence (1748), which remains to this day one of the best imitations of both the form and mood of Spenser's Faerie Queene. Robert Blair (1699-1746), is remembered as the author of one poem, The Grave (1743), in blank verse, a gloomy if at times effective monologue that attained a considerable vogue at the time and had some influence on later poets. Edward Young (1681-1765), although the author of much besides the Night Thoughts (1742), owes his fame to this one poem. In blank verse which at times rises to a genuine eloquence, Young discourses on "Life, Death, and Immortality," in much the mood of Blair's Grave. James Macpherson (1736-96) was the author of the socalled poems of Ossian. It is probable that Macpherson built up his forgeries around some genuine fragments of old Celtic verse; but for the mood of the poems, the "delight in sorrow," and the striking portrayal of mountain scenery, he alone was responsible. During his lifetime the cheat was suspected; Dr. Johnson, for instance, refused to be taken in; but despite this uncertainty these "mountain monotones" attained a tremendous popularity in England and on the continent. William Collins (1721-59) brought to the mideighteenth century a lyric instinct and a finished technique that mark him as one of the most distinguished poets of the period. During a life that was short and clouded by insanity Collins wrote a series of odes and a few lyrics which, however little they may have appealed to the mass of his contemporaries, have found admirers in every succeeding generation. Thomas Chatterton (175270) is like Macpherson famous for his literary

forgeries. At the age of fifteen he planned and in large part executed a cycle of romantic tales, cast in an imitation middle-English dialect, and represented as the work of a fifteenth century poet named Rowley. Disappointed in his hope to make a living as a man of letters, Chatterton poisoned himself in his London garret, and the world has not ceased to wonder at the largeness and splendor of the boy's poetic accomplishment and promise. William Blake (1757-1827), poet, artist, engraver, and mystic, was one of the most eccentric of English men of letters, and as such has had little influence on the main current of English verse. But the simple perfection and daring imagery of Blake's lyrics, especially the Songs of Innocence (1789), and Songs of Experience (1794), are untouched by the obscurity of his longer works, and mark him as one of the masters of English song. George Crabbe (1754-1832), though he did most of his work after the Lyrical Ballads had been published, clung to the eighteenth century couplet that connects him with Pope. But his determination to picture with unvarnished truthfulness the life of a small English town makes The Village (1783) and The Borough (1810) unlike the conventional description of the eighteenth century, and Crabbe is on the whole a herald of the new age.

GRAY (1716-1771)

He was

Thomas Gray's life was uneventful. born in London, December, 1716. At Eton he met Horace Walpole, whose name is connected with the publication of some of Gray's most famous poems. He went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, but left in 1738 without a degree. In 1739 Gray and Walpole together made the "grand tour," the records of which are preserved in some of Gray's most memorable letters. From 1742 until his death in 1771 he lived as an academic recluse at Cambridge. In 1757 he declined the laureateship; though appointed Professor of Modern History in 1768 he delivered no lectures. One of the most scholarly of English poets, he shrank instinctively from the notoriety attendant upon publication; he printed but few verses, and the most famous, the Elegy, he published only because of the fear that a mangled and pirated copy was to appear in a magazine. But despite his sensitive and shrinking nature, the range of Gray's intellectual life was very wide; his letters and miscellaneous writings witness the fact that he was interested both in the worlds of art and letters and in the political and social development of his time.

Begin

His verse would be important in whatever age it had been written; but coming as it did during the years of transition from Pseudo-Classicism to Romanticism, it is unusually significant. Gray himself illustrates the change that was gradually to take place in all English literature. ning as a classicist, he wrote the Ode to Spring (1742), and the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742), in conventional eighteenth century "poetic diction," and indulged in a good deal of conventional moralizing. The Elegy, published 1751, although begun many years before,

was written in an approved classical form, but is distinctly different in mood from the earlier work, and is the most finished example of the "grave-yard school" which, including Blair's Grave and Young's Night Thoughts, looks back to Il Penseroso for much of its inspiration. The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, printed by Walpole in 1757, are still farther from eighteenth century ideals. But it was not till 1761, when Gray wrote The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of Odin, that his work became thoroughly romantic.

Dr. Johnson's criticism, in his Life of Gray, is unsympathetic, but valuable as showing the attitude of the eighteenth century towards a poet of the new order. Gosse's Life, in the E. M. L., is a good biography. Phelps's Selections, in the Athenæum Press Series (Ginn), is an inexpensive edition of Gray's best work, both prose and poetry, and contains much valuable editorial matter. Gosse's edition of the complete works (4 vols., Macmillan) is the standard. Arnold's essay on Gray (Essays in Criticism, Macmillan) is appreciative, and in most respects accurate.

COWPER (1731-1800)

William Cowper, one of the pathetic figures in English literature, lived a life that was clouded by periodic attacks of religious melancholia and insanity, and was otherwise uneventful. Born in 1731, in Hertfordshire, he spent seven years at the Westminster School. In 1754 he was called to the bar; the dread of a public examination before assuming a clerkship in the House of Lords precipitated his first attack of insanity in 1763. From this he did not recover for eighteen months; never again was he free from the spectre. The rest of his life is memorable for his friendship with Morley Unwin and his wife Mary Unwin. Mr. Unwin, a clergyman, died in 1765; in 1767 Cowper and Mrs. Unwin began their life together at Olney. It is probable that Cowper would have married Mrs. Unwin had he not suffered a second attack of insanity in 1773. After recovering, Cowper, in need of some regular employment, began to write verses, and amused himself by carpentry, gardening, and caring for tame hares and other household pets. His first great work, The Task, appeared in 1785. In this long poem Cowper allowed his fancy to play over things in general; as a result The Task is a composite of verse descriptive of the English landscape that he knew and loved, of satire and comment on conditions in Europe, and of accounts of Cowper's life. It is written in blank verse; the fact that it became generally popular is indicative that the tyranny of the couplet was already being broken. John Gilpin, Cowper's most famous piece of humorous verse, also appeared in 1785; in 1791 he completed his translation of Homer. The remaining years were darkened by sorrow and melancholia. In 1794 he was again insane; in 1796 Mrs. Unwin died. The Castaway and To Mary picture with poignant force the pathetic blackness of this period.

Aside from the interest attaching to Cowper's

poetry because of its inherent worth, there is a significance in his work which students of literary history have not failed to mark. In a real sense Cowper was the spiritual predecessor of the great Romanticists. He had a sympathy for outcast humanity as sincere as Shelley's, if less passionate; his love of nature was as deep-seated as Wordworth's, though his musings on nature never led him to the heights which Wordsworth attained through his "impassioned contemplation."

The best one volume edition of Cowper is the Globe (Macmillan); the volume of selections in the Athenæum Press series (Ginn) is representative and inexpensive. Southey's Life, though written long ago, is still valuable; more recent is Goldwin Smith's in the E. M. L. Leslie Stephen's essay, in his Hours in a Library, and Bagehot's, in his Literary Studies, are suggestive.

BURNS (1759-1796)

Robert Burns lived a life of hard work, interrupted by periods of reckless and enthusiastic relaxation; a life which from some points of view was a tragic failure, involving many besides Burns himself in the wreck. Yet it is noteworthy that such stern moralists as Wordsworth and Whittier should have been willing to forgive Burns's many weaknesses, and to point only to the largeness of his accomplishment.

He was born in Ayrshire, near the west coast of Scotland, in 1759. His father, William Burnes, was a hard-working man of the peasant class, but mentally superior to the average small farmer, and the equal of any one in ambition for his children. By the time Burns was fifteen he was doing much of the work of his father's farm; in 1784, when his father died, he and his brother Gilbert undertook farming for themselves, but with poor financial results. It was about this time that he met Jean Armour, later his wife. During 1785 and 1786 he wrote much of the verse on which his fame depends; had he never pub

lished anything but the 1786 volume of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, he would have been sure of ultimate recognition. Here, in the little volume printed at Kilmarnock, the proceeds of which were to defray the cost of Burns's intended emigration to America, were The Twa Dogs, The Holy Fair, The Cotter's Saturday Night, To a Mouse, To a Daisy, and the Epistle to Davie. The success of this venture prompted Burns to change his plans, and in the same year he went up to Edinburgh, where he became the lion of the season. A second volume, published in Edinburgh in 1787, brought him more renown and a considerable sum of money. In 1788 he married Jean Armour, and took up farming at Ellisland. But his venture proved unsuccessful, and in 1789 he was glad to fall back on an appointment to the excise service that brought him fifty pounds per year. In 1791 he moved to Dumfries, and there, after five years of hard labor as exciseman, he died.

Burns's poetry has at times been overpraised, especially by Scottish critics; but after all allowances have been made for national or personal prejudices, much remains of permanent value. His best songs, written in most part during the last six years of his life, his simple pictures of Scottish domesticity, his satires on cant and makebelieve in Church and State, and his two unique contributions to English poetry, Tam O'Shanter and The Jolly Beggars, these have passed out of the narrow circle of Scottish and local verse, and have become part of the world's lit

erature.

The best edition of Burns's poetry is the Centenary (four volumes, T. C. and E. C. Jack). The one volume Cambridge edition (Houghton Mifflin) contains the Centenary text and some of the notes. Shairp's Life, in the E. M. L., is the best brief biography. Carlyle's well known essay, Stevenson's, in his Familiar Studies of Men and Books, and Henley's, in the Centenary and Cambridge editions, are all valuable.

IN LATE ANGLO-SAXON (Circa 1050) 1. On frymde wæs Word, and þæt Word was mid Gode, and God wæs þæt Word.

2. þæt was on fruman mid Gode.

3. Ealle þing wæron geworhte ðurh hyne; and nan þing næs geworht butan him.

4. pet wæs lif þe on him geworht was; and þæt lif wæs manna leoht.

5. And þæt leoht lyht on dystrum; and þystro þæt ne genamon.

6. Mann was from Gode asend, þæs nama was Iohannes.

7. Des com to gewitnesse, þæt he gewitnesse cydde be dam leohte, þæt ealle menn þurh hyne gelyfdon.

8. Næs he leoht, ac pæt he gewitnesse forð bære be þam leohte.

9. So leoht wæs þæt onlyht ælcne cumendne man on þisne middaneard.

10. He was on middanearde, and middaneard was geworht þurh hine, and middaneard hine ne

gecneow.

11. To his agenum he com, and hig hyne ne underfengon.

12. Soolice swa hwylce swa hyne underfengon, he sealde him anweald þæt hi wæron Godes bearn, pam de gelyfap on his naman:

13. þa ne synt acennede of blodum, ne of flæsces willan, ne of weres willan, ac hig synt of Gode acennede.

14. And þæt Word was flæsc geworden, and eardode on us, and we gesawon hys wuldor, swylce ancennedes wuldor of Fæder, þæt was ful mid gyfe and soðfastnysse.

IN TYNDALE'S BIBLE (1534)

1. In the beginnynge was the worde, and the worde was with God: and the worde was God.

2. The same was in the beginnynge with God. 3. All thinges were made by it, and without it was made nothing that was made.

4. In it was lyfe, and the lyfe was the lyght of men,

5. And the lyght shyneth in the darcknes, but the darcknes comprehended it not.

6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was Iohn.

7. The same cam as a witness of the lyght, that all men through him myght beleve.

IN WYCLIF'S BIBLE (Circa 1385)

1. In the bygynnynge was the worde, that is, Goddis sone, and the worde was at God, and God was the worde.

2. This was in the bigynnynge at God.

3. Alle thingis ben made by hym, and withouten hym is made nouzt, that thing that is made. 4. In hym was lijf, and the lijf was the lizte of

men.

5. And the lizte schyneth in dirkenessis, and dirkenessis comprehenden, or taken, not it.

6. A man was sente fro God, to whom the name was Ioon.

7. This man came into witnessynge, that he schulde bere witnessynge of the lizt, that alle men schulde bileue by hym.

8. He was not the lizt, but that he schulde bere witnessynge of the list.

9. It was verrey lizte the whiche lizteneth eche man comynge into this worlde.

10. He was in the worlde, and the worlde was made by hym, and the worlde knew hym not.

II. He came into his owne thingis, and his receyueden hym not.

12. Forsothe how many euer receyueden hym, he zaue to hem power for to be made the sones of God, to hem that bileueden in his name;

13. The whiche not of bloodis, nether of wille of fleysche, nether of wille of man, but ben borne of God.

14. And the worde, that is Goddis sone, is made fleysche, or man, and hath dwellide in vs, and we haue seen the glorie of hym, the glorie as of the one bigoten of the fadir, the sone ful of grace and treuthe.

IN THE AUTHORIZED VERSION (1611) 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. 4. In him was life; and the life was the light of

men.

5. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

7. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.

8. He was not that lyght: but to beare witnes of the lyght.

9. That was a true lyght, which lyghteth all men that come into the worlde.

10. He was in the worlde, and the worlde was made by him: and yet the worlde knewe him not. 11. He cam amonge his (awne) and his awne receaved him not.

12. But as meny as receaved him, to them he gave power to be the sonnes of God in that they beleved on his name:

13. which were borne, not of bloude nor of the will of the flesshe, nor yet of the will of man: but of God.

14. And the worde was made flesshe and dwelt amonge us, and we sawe the glory of it, as the glory of the only begotten sonne of the father, which worde was full of grace and verite.

8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

9. That was the true Light, which lighteth every man, that cometh into the world.

10. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.

11. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.

12. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:

13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.