PEPYS (1633-1703)

Samuel Pepys, who quite unconsciously made himself one of the most interesting if not most significant figures of English literature, was born in 1633. From St. Paul's School, London, he went up in 1651 to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he remained three or four years. On leaving the University he married, and soon attached himself to his cousin Sir Edward Montagu, later the Earl of Sandwich, to whom he owed much of his subsequent advancement. In 1660 he went with the expedition that brought Charles II back to England, acting as secretary to Montagu, the commander-in-chief. The same year he was appointed "Clerk of the Acts" in the Navy Office, and began the keeping of his diary. Until 1688 he was actively engaged in governmental affairs, part of the time as member of Parliament, but chiefly in the Admiralty, where his record was brilliant. Because of his intimate friendship with the Duke of York he was at times attacked by political enemies; charges of peculation were brought against him, but none were proved. With the exile of James II in 1688 Pepys's official career ended. He was dismissed from the Admiralty in March, 1689; the remaining years of his life he spent in retirement, and died in 1703.

The manuscript of the Diary, by which Pepys is known to the world, was among the books he willed to Magdalene College. It was written in short-hand, for no eye but his own, and was at once an honest record of fact, and a complete revelation of Pepys's character. Attention was first drawn to it by an article of Sir Walter Scott's (1826), reviewing a fragmentary edition of the year preceding. Since that time many editions have appeared, the last and best being that edited by Henry Wheatley, and published by George Bell and Sons in eight volumes.

Laici (1682) and The Hind and the Panther (1687), the first a poem in support of the Church of England, and the second Dryden's poetical confession of faith in Roman Catholicism, illustrate his command of the heroic couplet and his ability to reason in verse, at the same time that they exhibit the least pleasing phase of Dryden's character, his willingness to abandon an unprofitable for a profitable cause. For caustic wit his greatest satires, Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and MacFlecknoe (1682) have never been surpassed in English. At least two lyrics, the Song for St. Cecilia's Day and Alexander's Feast, witness his ability to move easily in forms other than the heroic couplet which he virtually established. As a translator of Virgil, Homer, and other classical poets, he did much to familiarize English readers with the literatures of Greece and Rome. In prose works such as the Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) and the Preface to the Fables (1699) he showed keen critical ability and the power to write clear and readable prose. During the last ten years of his life Dryden was a frequenter of Will's Coffee House, where in his easy chair he presided over the English literary world much as Dr. Johnson was to do seventy-five years later in The Club. Although generally neglected to-day, Dryden was a man of great power, and both by example and precept did much to establish the literary fashions that were to prevail in England until the time of Wordsworth.

The best one volume edition of Dryden is the Cambridge (Houghton Mifflin), although this does not contain the plays. The Scott-Saintsbury (Paterson, Edinburgh) is complete, although too cumbersome for general use. The best brief biography is Saintsbury's (E. M. L.). Lowell's essay in Among My Books, and William Hazlitt's in Lectures on the English Poets, are suggestive and valuable.

DRYDEN (1631-1700)

John Dryden was born in 1631, in Northamptonshire. Educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, he published in 1658 his Stanzas to the memory of Oliver Cromwell. At the time of the Restoration he wrote the most distinguished of the many welcomes to Charles II, Astræa Redux. In 1663 he began writing for the stage, and by 1670 had attained such eminence that he was appointed Poet Laureate and Historiographer Royal, with a stipend of two hundred pounds. A pension of one hundred pounds was later added to this, and in 1683 he became Collector of the Port of London. The revolution of 1688 deprived him of all his public honors, and forced him to spend the last twelve years of his life writing for a living. He died in 1700, generally acknowledged England's leading man of letters.

Of Dryden may be said what Dr. Johnson said of Goldsmith: "There is almost no form of writing which he did not attempt, and no form that he attempted did he fail to adorn." His dramas were many and popular; his religious poems, Religio

DEFOE (1660?-1731)

Over Daniel Defoe's life and character there hangs a veil of mystery which baffles accurate biography. He was the son of a London butcher, a Dissenter, and went for a few years to a Dissenters' school. Then he dropped out of sight, to reappear in 1684 as a London merchant getting married. By 1688 he was sufficiently interested in politics to join actively in supporting William of Orange. Whatever his business, his affairs were in so bad a state in 1691 that he went bankrupt to the tune of £17,000; a managership of a tile factory set him on his feet again. His literary activity dates apparently from about 1697, though he had done some writing before that; but it was in 1701, with The True-born Englishman, that Defoe made his first great hit, for it brought not only popular but royal favor, and perhaps secret employment by the King. Defoe was now launched upon a career of pamphlet writing which lasted throughout the rest of his life, and produced an almost unbelievable number of articles on all sorts of subjects. The best known of these, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters (1702), led to the author's imprisonment and exhibition in the pillory. After

his release from Newgate he started The Review, a tri-weekly political periodical, which ran 170413, of first-rate importance in the history of the newspaper. For many years Defoe added to his pamphleteering and journalistic activities the business of a government agent, ostensibly on behalf of the Tory ministry, but certainly with bad breaches of faith to his employers. As Trent says: "For more than twenty years he practised every sort of subterfuge to preserve his anonymity, and he soon grew sufficiently callous to write, presumably for pay, on all sides of any given subject. Within the arena of journalism he was a treacherous mercenary who fought all comers with any weapon and stratagem he could command." In 1719 Defoe displayed in the large the combination of journalistic and narrative skill he had shown on a small scale as far back as 1706 in The Apparition of Mrs. Veal by getting an account of the solitary life of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez and expanding it into Robinson Crusoe. The immediate popularity of the book Defoe turned to account by publishing in the next few years the series of prose fictions which constitute his real title to fame: Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720), Captain Singleton (1720), Moll Flanders (1722), Journal of the Plague Year (1722), Colonel Jack (1722), Roxana (1724). The last six years of his life were employed in writing books of no moment and pamphlets on a great variety of matters.

Defoe's importance in the history of English literature comes (1) through The Review, which initiated certain ideas, such as the editorial and the special article, still employed in journalism, and but for which The Tatler and The Spectator might never have been conceived; (2) through his fictions, which are perhaps not novels in the modern sense of the word, since plot and characterization are only rudimentary, but which by their verisimilitude, effectiveness of single situations, and general popularity, paved the way for the work of Richardson and Fielding. At all events Defoe's "genius for lying like the truth" has rarely been equalled in English fiction.

Defoe's chief works are reprinted in the Bohn Library; there is a good edition of the novels, with introduction by G. A. Aitken (Dent & Co.). The most up-to-date biography is the brief chapter in the Cambridge History of English Literature (vol. ix) by W. P. Trent.

SWIFT (1667-1745)

Jonathan Swift's involuntary and reluctant connection with Ireland, which he always resented as a trick of adverse fate, began with his birth there, though his parents were English. His father died before he was born, leaving his mother poor, and it was only through the assistance of relatives that Swift was able to go to Trinity College, Dublin. There he made no brilliant record, obtaining his degree only by special favor. In 1689 place was made for him in the household of Sir William Temple, a well known figure in English politics and letters; though his secretarial duties were light, and though Temple seems to have treated the young man with

consideration, Swift's proud temper made him intolerant of patronage, and to secure independence he entered the church. During the years of residence with Temple at Moor Park, Swift wrote his first satires, The Battle of the Books, a jeu d'esprit on a squabble over the comparative merits of ancient and modern literature, and The Tale of a Tub, a powerful attack on the Catholics and Dissenters in particular, and, in general, on the folly of creed insistence on non-essentials. At Moor Park, too, Swift met and came to love Esther Johnson, a ward of Temple's, some years younger than Swift, but his greatest friend through life.

On Temple's death in 1699 Swift was given a living at Laracor, near Dublin. The publication of the two early satires in 1704 made his reputation, and he continued to use his pen in political and religious controversy. At first a Whig, he joined the Tories in 1710, and for several years was a dominant figure in public life. Of the writings of these years The Conduct of the Allies (1711), a pamphlet written in opposition to Whig support of the war with France, is the best example. Swift hoped for an English bishopric, but The Tale of a Tub had ruined his chances and he was forced to be content with being made Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin. On the downfall of the Tory ministry in 1714 Swift returned to Dublin, and there spent the rest of his life, exiled from the society where he had cut so brilliant a figure, and nursing a grudge against all the world. Of Swift's London days The Journal to Stella, a sort of diary which Swift kept for the entertainment of Esther Johnson, gives an accurate and pleasing account. For Stella Swift cherished a devoted affection, and though the rumor that the two were secretly married has never been proved true, it was Stella who made life tolerable for the lonely Dean until her death in 1728. Despite his dislike for Ireland Swift's heart burned at the wretchedness and oppression of the Irish people, and he endeared himself to them by such writings as the Drapier's Letters (1724), defeating an English scheme to debase the Irish coinage, and the mordant Modest Proposal (1729). In 1726 was published Gulliver's Travels, most delightful of fictions and most terrible of satires. Swift's last years were embittered by loneliness and physical agony and clouded by madness.

By virtue of his sheer intellectual power and his passionate feeling Swift is preeminent among English satirists, particularly in the use of irony. Under the childish squabbles of the brothers in The Tale of a Tub concerning their coats, under the marvels of Gulliver's adventures, under the coldly logical brutality of the Modest Proposal, seethes passionate scorn for the pettiness, the hypocrisy, and the inhumanity of the human race. Swift, unlike Dryden and Pope, does not satirize the individual; rather he expresses his savage contempt for man himself, and in the depiction of the Yahoos he has presented the most terrible indictment of human frailty that the mind of man has ever conceived. The contrast between the utter misanthropy of his writings and the facts of his private life-his love for Stella, his service of the Irish people, and his secret benefactions among the

Joseph Addison was born in May, 1672, the son of a Wiltshire clergyman. After leaving the Charterhouse School, where he met Richard Steele, he went up to Oxford and won a considerable reputation by his scholarship and literary ability, finally being elected fellow of Magdalen. During the troubled years between the revolution of 1688 and the accession of George I in 1714, the man who could write was sure to be sought out by one of the two contending parties. Addison was no exception. His Latin poem on the Peace of Ryswick, Pax Gulielmi (1697), marked him as one of the most promising Whig men of letters, and secured him a pension of three hundred pounds. Later, when the Duke of Marlborough won his great victory at Blenheim, Addison's The Campaign (1704) brought him new honors and started him on a political career which culminated in his appointment in 1717 to one of the two Secretaryships of State. He died in 1719, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

As a man of letters Addison is remembered chiefly for his mastery of the familiar essay, a type which, though introduced into English literature by other persons, has never been handled with greater ease or more certain effectiveness than by Addison. A friend of Sir Richard Steele, he contributed some forty papers to The Tatler (1709), a tri-weekly periodical devoted to politics, literature, and miscellaneous topics. The Tatler was succeeded in 1711 by The Spectator, which appeared six times a week, and for which Addison and Steele furnished most of the papers. The Spectator was non-political; in it Addison had a free hand to write the comments on the gentle art of living which form the basis of his literary fame. Here too Addison developed the character of Sir Roger de Coverley, whose portrait is one of the most finished in all the gallery of English fiction. The clearness, ease, and urbanity of Addison's prose, and the genial serenity of his outlook on life, have long caused him to be singled out for praise and emulation. Johnson's famous sentence, reflecting the judgment both of Addison's contemporaries and of subsequent generations, remains the best of all comments: "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison."

The Everyman edition of The Spectator (E. P. Dutton) is an excellent reprint of the entire publication; Addison's other works may be found in the Bohn Library. Courthope's Life in the E. M. L. is the best brief biography; Dr. Johnson's, in

his Lives of the Poets (Standard English Classics, Oxford Univ. Press), is invaluable as giving the verdict of the eighteenth century on Addison. Macaulay's essay is easily accessible; Thackeray's in the English Humorists is sympathetic and enlightening.

STEELE (1672-1729)

Richard Steele was born in March, 1672, in Dublin, and never outgrew a certain extravagance and prodigality, which, with his winning good nature, may be attributed in part to his Irish ancestry: He attended the Charterhouse School, and afterwards at Oxford continued the friendship with Addison begun at the Charterhouse. Unlike Addison, however, he left Oxford without a degree to enter the army, where his career was somewhat eccentric, though his talents and friendliness won him a captaincy. Before making a name for himself as an essayist, Steele had written plays, and in The Conscious Lovers (1722) wrote one of the best sentimental comedies. In 1707 he began his career as a journalist by editing The Gazette, and in 1709 established The Tatler. With The Tatler began his literary association with Addison; in The Spectator (1711-12) Steele wrote about half of the papers, and drew the first sketch for Sir Roger de Coverley, whose character Addison elaborated. In 1713 The Spectator was followed by The Guardian, the work of the two friends; subsequently Steele alone produced various periodicals, no one of which became fairly established. With the accession of George I in 1714 Steele's long devotion to the Whig cause was rewarded. Knighted in 1715, he was appointed to various lucrative offices, but was unable to practice economy, and in 1724 he retired to Wales in financial embarrassment. Here, in 1729, he died.

Steele's fame as a man of letters is closely bound up with that of his greater if somewhat less winning friend, Addison. Steele was the first to acknowledge his debt to Addison, and as the result of his generous disclaimer, posterity has done scant justice to Steele himself. Lacking Addison's poise, he had an enthusiasm and initiative which contributed much to the success of the literary partnership, and in his dramas showed a vivacity of humor entirely foreign to the author of Cato. Moreover, it was Steele, not Addison, who first realized the possibilities of the periodical essay, established The Tatler, and literally prepared the way for The Spectator.

Austin Dobson's Life in the E. M. L., is an excellent brief biography. As in the case of Addison, Thackeray's comment in the English Humorists is sympathetic and suggestive. Steele's plays may be found in the Mermaid edition (Scribner's); The Tatler, The Spectator, and other periodicals have been reprinted in various editions.

POPE (1688-1744)

Alexander Pope was born in London of Catholic parents, and by reason of his religion and of a bodily weakness which left him deformed and

supersensitive, he was barred from that active participation in public affairs in which so many eighteenth century men of letters engaged. His education he obtained at home, largely through wide if random reading. The first public exhibition of his skill in numbers was given in the Pastorals, printed in 1709, but written, he said, when he was sixteen. The Essay on Criticism (1711) was praised by Addison in The Spectator, and won for the young poet a reputation which became fame on the appearance of The Rape of the Lock (1712, 1714.) His literary position secure, Pope undertook a verse translation of Homer: the Iliad was finished in 1720, the Odyssey in 1725, and the income made Pope independent. He bought a villa at Twickenham, and took an almost childish pleasure in developing the grounds according to the sham classic taste of the day. An edition of Shakespeare which Pope issued in 1725 was speedily shown to be full of errors. The adverse criticism added to an already long list of literary enemies whom Pope had made; he took revenge on his critics and heaped scorn on a large number of insignificant writers in the famous satire The Dunciad. The history of the composition of this poem, and of the changes made in it during successive editions from 1728 to 1743, is one of the most curious in the whole range of literature. The later years of his life were divided between lampooning his enemies in polished attacks, often harsh and false, such as the Epistle to Dr. Arbuth not (1735), and writing pseudo-philosophical poems like the Essay on Man (1732-35), which sets forth the deistic theories of Pope's friend Bolingbroke.

There is little in Pope's character to admire except a firm devotion to literature and an iron resolution which compelled success despite the physical weakness. He was treacherous, malicious, his word was unreliable, his vanity and resentment of criticism were excessive. His poetry, once lauded as all that verse should be, is now generally relegated to the second class, though admittedly at the head of that class. It is the complete epitome of the failings and excellences of the classical school. It has no moral elevation, no loftiness of thought, no feeling for humanity or nature, no passion except the passion of personal animosity. But it is marvellously finished, clear as crystal, neat and pointed as no other English poetry has been. Pope is the absolute and ultimate master of the heroic couplet; for metrical perfection and epigrammatic brilliance his couplets are without rival.

"True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed":

this couplet is at once a definition and an illustration of Pope's theory and practice. As a satirist Pope ranks with the greatest. He does not compete with Dryden in the field of political satire; he does not attack mankind in general like Swift. Against the foibles of society he directs the wonderfully clever Rape of the Lock; but he is at his best-and is most merciless-in personal satire,

when he launches a polished dart, keen and poisoned, against some real or fancied enemy.

The standard edition is that by Elwin and Courthope (10 vols., John Murray). The best single volume edition is the Globe (Macmillan). The best biography is Leslie Stephen's (E. M. L.).

GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

Oliver Goldsmith was born in Ireland, in 1728, the son of a poor parson. In the University of Dublin he failed to distinguish himself, and when after graduation he undertook to enter one of the professions, he was for some time unsuccessful. A brief experience in Edinburgh, where he was studying medicine, was followed by three years of wandering about on the continent. Just what he did during these years it is hard to tell; when he returned to England in 1756 he claimed to have graduated in medicine at the University of Leyden; probably part of George Primrose's story, in the Vicar, is a retelling of Goldsmith's own experiences. Unsuccessful as a physician, Goldsmith soon was doing literary hack work for any bookseller who would employ him. The first thing to bring him any real reputation was his series of essays The Citizen of the World (1762). In 1763 he became one of the original nine members of The Club, and was thus a personal friend of Johnson, Burke, and Reynolds. In 1764 appeared The Traveller, a poem reminiscent in part of his own experiences, and hailed as the best work since Pope. Two years later came The Vicar of Wakefield, and in 1768 the first of his two plays, The Good-Natured Man. In 1770 The Deserted Village enhanced his reputation as a poet; in 1773 She Stoops to Conquer had a deserved success on the stage. The next year Goldsmith died. His warm good nature, his prodigality, his petty vanities and his large unselfishness, his fine independence and his helplessness, are all brought out in Boswell's Life of Johnson. He was a man whom everybody loved; when he died Johnson said: "Let not his frailties be remembered; he was a very great man."

As a man of letters Goldsmith was great in part at least because of his versatility, for he was essayist, poet, novelist, and dramatist. But his versatility was not that of the mediocre hack. Between Addison and Lamb it is hard to find better essays than Goldsmith's. His verse, especially The Deserted Village, though written in Popeian couplets, has a freshness and sweetness that are still delightful. His dramas were clean and pure, and "fulfilled the great end of comedy, making an audience laugh." And The Vicar, de spite the poor plot, is a novel which many generations have loved for its superb characterization of the central figure, and its genial portrayal of domestic manners.

The best contemporary source of information about Goldsmith is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Black's life, in the E. M. L., and Dobson's in the Great Writers series, are good brief biographies. The plays, poems, and the Vicar, have been many times reprinted; a good reprint of the Essays is that edited by Aikin and Tuckerman

(Crowell). Macaulay's Essay is reprinted in this volume.

JOHNSON (1709-1784)

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, the son of a poor bookseller. As a child he was sickly; the scrofula, for which he was "touched" by Queen Anne, left permanent traces upon his body and his habits. With some financial assistance Johnson managed to get to Pembroke College, Oxford, but poverty compelled him to leave in 1731 before he had obtained a degree. Oxford later honored herself by making him a Master of Arts and finally a Doctor of Laws. After struggling along for some time at teaching and hack writing Johnson married, and with the money brought him by his wife tried to start a private school. The venture failed. Johnson then abandoned Lichfield, and in 1737 tramped up to London with a companion as impoverished as himself, young David Garrick, destined to become the greatest actor of his time. Arrived in London, Johnson was speedily submerged in the wretched life of a hack writer. He attracted a little attention with a satirical poem London (1738), more with the more deserving Vanity of Human Wishes (1749). He tried twice to launch a periodical of the Spectator type; The Rambler (1750-52) and The Idler (1758-60) were too heavy to be more than moderately successful. The greatest work of these treadmill years was the famous Dictionary, published in 1755, which made Johnson's reputation and won for him his title of "the Great Lexicographer." It is the least impersonal of all such books, and bristles with definitions illustrating Johnson's eccentricities and prejudices. In 1759 Johnson was still so poor that when his mother died he defrayed the expenses of her funeral by writing in the evenings of a single week his moral prose romance Rasselas; 1762 brought relief, however, when Johnson was granted a pension of three hundred pounds, and thenceforth he was never again in want. The Club, one of the most famous of all literary fellowships, was organized in 1764; it had as members the most brilliant men of their day-Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, Burke, Gibbon, and others but Johnson outshone them all, and over the Club, as over the world of letters, ruled as dictator. The chief work of Johnson's later years was done in his edition of Shakespeare (1765), still valuable for the sound common sense of its notes, and the Lives of the English Poets (1779-81), a series of short biographies prepared to accompany standard edition of the poets from Cowley to Gray. In 1773 he made a trip with Boswell through Scotland and the Hebrides, an odd expedition for an inactive man of sixty-four, who loved London and despised Scotland with almost equal fervor; A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland records his impressions. He died in his house in Fleet Street in 1784, and was buried in the Abbey.

a

Johnson was the last great representative of the classical school, and by his influence doubtless held off for some time the impending literary

revolution. As a writer he is seen at his best in The Lives of the Poets. The taste of his time and his personal limitations kept him from a due appreciation of the work of certain men, notably Milton and Gray, but in general his judgments are fair and his comparisons enlightening; his estimates of Dryden, Addison, and Pope are classics. As a talker Johnson was supreme: his conversation, so faithfully set down by Boswell, was simpler and more brilliant than his writing, not so laden with the ponderous Latinisms which we think of as characteristically "Johnsonese," though it should be added that his later writings are not so pompous in style as the earlier. The man Johnson was greater than his works. No famous man had more or odder peculiarities, but these were mere externals. His massive common sense, his real tenderness of heart, his generosity, his sincere piety, his transparent honesty, endear his memory. Macaulay, writing in 1856, concludes thus: "The old philosopher is still among us in the brown coat with the metal buttons, and the shirt which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No human being who has been more than seventy years in the grave is so well known to us. And it is but just to say that our intimate acquaintance with what he would himself have called the anfractuosities of his intellect and his temper, serves only to strengthen our conviction that he was both a great and a good

man.

There is a good volume of selections from Johnson's writings in the Little Masterpieces, edited by Bliss Perry (Doubleday Page and Co.). The best edition of the Lives of the Poets is that by Birkbeck Hill (Clarendon Press). The essays by Macaulay and Carlyle, inspired by Croker's edition of Boswell's Life, should be known to all students of Johnson.

BOSWELL (1740-1795)

James Boswell made himself famous by spreading Johnson's fame. He was the son of a Scotch lawyer of high standing, and went to the University of Edinburgh, afterward studying law, and practicing in Edinburgh and London. The year 1763 made Boswell's fortune, for then he visited London and made the acquaintance of Johnson. For twenty years he enjoyed the intimate friendship of the great man, who secured his admission to The Club. Though he was vain to excess, a snob imperturbably impudent on occasion, Boswell was not the fool he has sometimes been made out to be. He had wit enough to recognize a great man when he saw one, and sense enough to make the most of his opportunities. The accuracy of observation, the liveliness, the veracity, the thorough humanness of his Life of Johnson, published in 1791, make it the best biography ever written.

The definitive edition of Boswell's Life is by Birkbeck Hill (6 vols., Clarendon Press). The Everyman Library contains a complete edition in two volumes.