English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Part 37

His _Bard_ is founded on a tradition that Edward I., when he conquered Wales, ordered all the bards to be put to death, that they might not, by their songs, excite the Welsh people to revolt. The last one who figures in his story, sings a lament for his brethren, prophesies the downfall of the usurper, and then throws himself over the cliff:

"Be thine despair and sceptered care, To triumph and to die are mine!"

He spoke, and headlong from the mountain's height, Deep in the roaring tide, he plunged to endless night.

WILLIAM COWPER.--Next in the catalogue of the transition school occurs the name of one who, like Gray, was a recluse, but with a better reason and a sadder one. He was a gentle hypochondriac, and, at intervals, a maniac, who literally turned to poetry, like Saul to the harper, for relief from his sufferings. William Cowper, the eldest son of the Rector of Berkhampsted in Hertfords.h.i.+re, was born on the 15th of November, 1731. He was a delicate and sensitive child, and was seriously affected by the loss of his mother when he was six years old. At school, he was cruelly treated by an older boy, which led to his decided views against public schools, expressed in his poem called _Tirocinium_. His morbid sensitiveness increased upon him as he grew older, and interfered with his legal studies and advancement. His depression of spirits took a religious turn; and we are glad to think that religion itself brought the balm which gave him twelve years of unclouded mind, devoted to friends.h.i.+p and to poetry. He was offered, by powerful friends, eligible positions connected with the House of Lords, in 1762; but as the one of these which he accepted was threatened with a public examination, he abandoned it in horror; not, however, before the fearful suspense had unsettled his brain, so that he was obliged to be placed, for a short time, in an asylum for the insane.

When he left this asylum, he went to Huntingdon, where he became acquainted with the Rev. William Unwin, who, with his wife and son, seem to have been congenial companions to his desolate heart. On the death of Mr. Unwin, in 1767, he removed with the widow to Olney, and there formed an intimate acquaintance with another clergyman, the Rev. William Newton.

Here, and in this society, the remainder of the poet's life was pa.s.sed in writing letters, which have been considered the best ever written in England; in making hymns, in conjunction with Mr. Newton, which have ever since been universal favorites; and in varied poetic attempts, which give him high rank in the literature of the day. The first of his larger pieces was a poem ent.i.tled, _The Progress of Error_, which appeared in 1783, when the author had reached the advanced age of 52. Then followed _Truth_ and _Expostulation_, which, according to the poet himself, did much towards diverting his melancholy thoughts. These poems would not have fixed his fame; but Lady Austen, an accomplished woman with whom he became acquainted in 1781, deserves our grat.i.tude for having proposed to him the subjects of those poems which have really made him famous, namely, _The Task, John Gilpin_, and the translation of _Homer_. Before, however, undertaking these, he wrote poems on _Hope_, _Charity_, _Conversation_ and _Retirement_. The story of _John Gilpin_--a real one as told him by Lady Austen--made such an impression upon him, that he dashed off the ballad at a sitting.

THE TASK.--The origin of _The Task_ is well known. In 1783, Lady Austen suggested to him to write a poem in blank verse: he said he would, if she would suggest the subject. Her answer was, "Write on _this sofa_." The poem thus begun was speedily expanded into those beautiful delineations of varied nature, domestic life, and religious sentiment which rivalled the best efforts of Thomson. The t.i.tle that connects them is _The Task.

Tirocinium_ or _the Review of Schools_, appeared soon after, and excited considerable attention in a country where public education has been the rule of the higher social life. Cowper began the translation of Homer in 1785, from a feeling of the necessity of employment for his mind. His translations of both Iliad and Odyssey, which occupied him for five years, and which did not entirely keep off his old enemy, were published in 1791.

They are correct in scholars.h.i.+p and idiom, but lack the nature and the fire of the old Grecian bard.

The rest of his life was busy, but sad--a constant effort to drive away madness by incessant labor. The loss of his friend, Mrs. Unwin, in 1796, affected him deeply, and the clouds settled thicker and thicker upon his soul. In the year before his death, he published that painfully touching poem, _The Castaway_, which gives an epitome of his own sufferings in the similitude of a wretch clinging to a spar in a stormy night upon the Atlantic.

His minor and fugitive poems are very numerous; and as they were generally inspired by persons and scenes around him, they are truly literary types of the age in which he lived. In his _Task_, he resembles Thomson and Akenside; in his didactic poems, he reminds us of the essays of Pope; in his hymns he catered successfully to the returning piety of the age; in his translations of Homer and of Ovid, he presented the ancients to moderns in a new and acceptable dress; and in his Letters he sets up an epistolary model, which may be profitably studied by all who desire to express themselves with energy, simplicity, and delicate taste.

OTHER WRITERS OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL.

_James Beattie_, 1735-1803: he was the son of a farmer, and was educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he was afterwards professor of natural philosophy. For four years he taught a village school. His first poem, _Retirement_, was not much esteemed; but in 1771 appeared the first part of _The Minstrel_, a poem at once descriptive, didactic, and romantic. This was enthusiastically received, and gained for him the favor of the king, a pension of 200 per annum, and a degree from Oxford. The second part was published in 1774. _The Minstrel_ is written in the Spenserian stanza, and abounds in beautiful descriptions of nature, marking a very decided progress from the artificial to the natural school.

The character of Edwin, the young minstrel, ardent in search for the beautiful and the true, is admirably portrayed; as is also that of the hermit who instructs the youth. The opening lines are very familiar:

Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple s.h.i.+nes afar;

and the description of the morning landscape has no superior in the language:

But who the melodies of morn can tell?

The wild brook babbling down the mountain side; The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell; The pipe of early shepherd dim descried In the lone valley.

Beattie wrote numerous prose dissertations and essays, one of which was in answer to the infidel views of Hume--_Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism_. Beattie was of an excitable and sensitive nature, and his polemical papers are valued rather for the beauty of their language, than for acuteness of logic.

_William Falconer_, 1730-1769: first a sailor in the merchant service, he afterwards entered the navy. He is chiefly known by his poem _The s.h.i.+pwreck_, and for its astonis.h.i.+ng connection with his own fortunes and fate. He was wrecked off Cape Colonna, on the coast of Greece, before he was eighteen; and this misfortune is the subject of his poem. Again, in 1760, he was cast away in the Channel. In 1769, the Aurora frigate, of which he was the purser, foundered in Mozambique Channels, and he, with all others on board, went down with her. The excellence of his nautical directions and the vigor of his descriptions establish the claims of his poem; but it has the additional interest attaching to his curious experience--it is his autobiography and his enduring monument. The picture of the storm is very fine; but in the handling of his verse there is more of the artificial than of the romantic school.

_William Shenstone_, 1714-1763: his princ.i.p.al work is _The Schoolmistress_, a poem in the stanza of Spenser, which is pleasing from its simple and sympathizing description of the village school, kept by a dame; with the tricks and punishment of the children, and many little traits of rural life and character. It is pitched in so low a key that it commends itself to the world at large. Shenstone is equally known for his mania in landscape gardening, upon which he spent all his means. His place, _The Leasowes_ in Shrops.h.i.+re, has gained the greater notoriety through the descriptions of Dodsley and Goldsmith. The natural simplicity of _The Schoolmistress_ allies it strongly to the romantic school, which was now about to appear.

_William Collins_, 1720-1756: this unfortunate poet, who died at the early age of thirty-six, deserves particular mention for the delicacy of his fancy and the beauty of his diction. His _Ode on the Pa.s.sions_ is universally esteemed for its sudden and effective changes from the bewilderment of Fear, the violence of Anger, and the wildness of Despair to the rapt visions of Hope, the gentle dejection of Pity, and the sprightliness of Mirth and Cheerfulness. His _Ode on the Death of Thomson_ is an exquisite bit of pathos, as is also the _Dirge on Cymbeline_.

Everybody knows and admires the short ode beginning

How sleep the brave who sink to rest By all their country's wishes blest!

His _Oriental Eclogues_ please by the simplicity of the colloquies, the choice figures of speech, and the fine descriptions of nature. But of all his poems, the most finished and charming is the _Ode to Evening_. It contains thirteen four-lined stanzas of varied metre, and in blank verse so full of harmony that rhyme would spoil it. It presents a series of soft, dissolving views, and stands alone in English poetry, with claims sufficient to immortalize the poet, had he written nothing else. The latter part of his life was clouded by mental disorders, not unsuggested to the reader by the pathos of many of his poems. Like Gray, he wrote little, but every line is of great merit.

_Henry Kirke White_, 1785-1806: the son of a butcher, this gifted youth displayed, in his brief life, such devotion to study, and such powers of mind, that his friends could not but predict a brilliant future for him, had he lived. Nothing that he produced is of the highest order of poetic merit, but everything was full of promise. Of a weak const.i.tution, he could not bear the rigorous study which he prescribed to himself, and which hastened his death. With the kind a.s.sistance of Mr. Capel Lofft and the poet Southey, he was enabled to leave the trade to which he had been apprenticed and go to Cambridge. His poems have most of them a strongly devotional cast. Among them are _Gondoline_, _Clifton Grove_, and the _Christiad_, in the last of which, like the swan, he chants his own death-song. His memory has been kept green by Southey's edition of his _Remains_, and by the beautiful allusion of Byron to his genius and his fate in _The English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. His sacred piece called _The Star of Bethlehem_ has been a special favorite:

When marshalled on the nightly plain The glittering host bestud the sky, One star alone of all the train Can fix the sinner's wandering eye.

_Bishop Percy_, 1728-1811: Dr. Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, deserves particular notice in a sketch of English Literature not so much for his own works,--although he was a poet,--as for his collection of ballads, made with great research and care, and published in 1765. By bringing before the world these remains of English songs and idyls, which lay scattered through the ages from the birth of the language, he showed England the true wealth of her romantic history, and influenced the writers of the day to abandon the artificial and reproduce the natural, the simple, and the romantic. He gave the impulse which produced the minstrelsy of Scott and the simple stories of Wordsworth. Many of these ballads are descriptive of the border wars between England and Scotland; among the greatest favorites are _Chevy Chase, The Battle of Otterburne, The Death of Douglas_, and the story of _Sir Patrick Spens_.

_Anne Let.i.tia Barbauld_, 1743-1825: the hymns and poems of Mrs. Barbauld are marked by an adherence to the artificial school in form and manner; but something of feminine tenderness redeems them from the charge of being purely mechanical. Her _Hymns in Prose for Children_ have been of value in an educational point of view; and the tales comprised in _Evenings at Home_ are entertaining and instructive. Her _Ode to Spring_, which is an imitation of Collins's _Ode to Evening_, in the same measure and comprising the same number of stanzas, is her best poetic effort, and compares with Collins's piece as an excellent copy compares with the picture of a great master.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

THE LATER DRAMA.

The Progress of the Drama. Garrick. Foote. c.u.mberland. Sheridan. George Colman. George Colman, the Younger. Other Dramatists and Humorists.

Other Writers on Various Subjects.

THE PROGRESS OF THE DRAMA.

The latter half of the eighteenth century, so marked, as we have seen, for manifold literary activity, is, in one phase of its history, distinctly represented by the drama. It was a very peculiar epoch in English annals.

The accession of George III., in 1760, gave promise, from the character of the king and of his consort, of an exemplary reign. George III. was the first monarch of the house of Hanover who may be justly called an English king in interest and taste. He and his queen were virtuous and honest; and their influence was at once felt by a people in whom virtue and honesty are inherent, and whose consciences and tastes had been violated by the evil examples of the former reigns.

In 1762 George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, was born; and as soon as he approached manhood, he displayed the worst features of his ancestral house: he was extravagant and debauched; he threw himself into a violent opposition to his father: with this view he was at first a Whig, but afterwards became a Tory. He had also peculiar opportunities for exerting authority during the temporary fits of insanity which attacked the king in 1764, in 1788, and in 1804. At last, in 1810, the king was so disabled from attending to his duties that the prince became regent, and a.s.sumed the reins of government, not to resign them again during his life.

In speaking of the drama of this period, we should hardly, therefore, be wrong in calling it the Drama of the Regency. It held, however, by historic links, following the order of historic events, to the earlier drama. Shakspeare and his contemporaries had established the dramatic art on a firm basis. The frown of puritanism, in the polemic period, had checked its progress: with the restoration of Charles II, it had returned to rival the French stage in wicked plots and prurient scenes. With the better morals of the Revolution, and the popular progress which was made at the accession of the house of Hanover, the drama was modified: the older plays were revived in their original freshness; a new and better taste was to be catered to; and what of immorality remained was chiefly due to the influence of the Prince of Wales. Actors, so long despised, rose to importance as great artists. Garrick and Foote, and, later, Kemble, Kean, and Mrs. Siddons, were social personages in England. Peers married actresses, and enduring reputation was won by those who could display the pa.s.sions and the affections to the life, giving flesh and blood and mind and heart to the inimitable creations of Shakspeare.

It must be allowed that this power of presentment marks the age more powerfully than any claims of dramatic authors.h.i.+p. The new play-writers did not approach Shakspeare; but they represented their age, and repudiated the vices, in part at least, of their immediate predecessors.

In them, too, is to be observed the change from the artificial to the romantic and natural, The scenes and persons in their plays are taken from the life around them, and appealed to the very models from which they were drawn.

DAVID GARRICK.--First among these purifiers of the drama is David Garrick, who was born in Lichfield, in 1716. He was a pupil of Dr. Johnson, and came up with that distinguished man to London, in 1735. The son of a captain in the Royal army, but thrown upon his own exertions, he first tried to gain a livelihood as a wine merchant; but his fondness for the stage led him to become an actor, and in taking this step he found his true position. A man of respectable parts and scholars.h.i.+p, he wrote many agreeable pieces for the stage; which, however, owed their success more to his accurate knowledge of the _mise en scene_, and to his own representation of the princ.i.p.al characters, than to their intrinsic merits. His mimetic powers were great: he acted splendidly in all casts, excelling, perhaps, in tragedy; and he, more than any actor before or since, has made the world thoroughly acquainted with Shakspeare. Dramatic authors courted him; for his appearance in any new piece was almost an a.s.surance of its success.

Besides many graceful prologues, epigrams, and songs, he wrote, or altered, forty plays. Among these the following have the greatest merit: _The Lying Valet_, a farce founded on an old English comedy; _The Clandestine Marriage_, in which he was aided by the elder Colman; (the character of _Lord Ogleby_ he wrote for himself to personate;) _Miss in her Teens_, a very clever and amusing farce. He was charmingly natural in his acting; but he was accused of being theatrical when off the stage. In the words of Goldsmith:

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; 'Twas only that when he was off, he was acting.

Garrick married a dancer, who made him an excellent wife. By his own exertions he won a highly respectable social position, and an easy fortune of 140,000, upon which he retired from the stage. He died in London in 1779.

In 1831-2 his _Private Correspondence with the Most Celebrated Persons of his Time_ was published, and opened a rich field to the social historian.

Among his correspondents were Dr. Johnson, Boswell, Goldsmith, Gibber, Sheridan, Burke, Wilkes, Junius, and Dr. Franklin. Thus Garrick catered largely to the history of his period, as an actor and dramatic author, ill.u.s.trating the stage; as a reviver of Shakspeare, and as a correspondent of history.