English Literature in the three latter decades of the reign of George III.-The Poets: CowperCrabbe-Burns-Darwin-Wordsworth-Southey-Coleridge-Scott-Byron-ShelleyKeats-Narrative character of Poetry-Campbell - Rogers-Leigh Hunt-MooreCrabbe's latter delineations of manners-More evangelical spirit in the body of the people -Theological Literature-Writers for the Stage-The Novelists-Godwin-HolcroftDr. Moore-Burney-Scott; the Waverley Novels - The Edinburgh Review -- The Quarterly Review-Blackwood's Magazine-Essayists-Wilson-Lamb-Hazlitt-Leigh Hunt-De Quincey-Political Economists-Scientific Discovery-Herschel-Davy-Dalton -Wollaston - Travellers - Two great mechanical inventions of the Steam-boat and the Printing Machine-Chronological Table of British Writers. THE termination of a reign, even under the circumstances which rendered the change of sovereignty from George the Third to George the Fourth merely nominal, nevertheless offers a fit resting place, at which we may pause in the narrative of public events, and look back upon matters which belong as essentially to the life of a people as their political condition. The great outburst of the French Revolution has always been associated with the Literature which preceded it. This Literature, like that of every other period in which Literature has a marked distinctive character, was the reflection of the thoughts that were seething in the minds of men. It took the form of a fanatical and intolerant irreligion. It gave expression to the belief that existing principles and forms of government were ill-adapted to promote the welfare of the governed, and that worn-out institutions must be replaced by others endowed with a new vitality. The whole spirit of political opposition excited by the corruption of the government, not being able to 112 ENGLISH LITERATURE. [1784-1820. find a vent in public affairs, had taken refuge in Literature. As irreligion in France had become a general passion, the writers, one and all, stimulated the prevailing unbelief in Christianity, under the false conviction that political society and religious society were regulated by analogous laws. The revolutionary doctrines thus propagated by the most subtle and the most eloquent of writers very largely influenced, if they did not produce, the great convulsion upon which Europe looked with fear and wonder. The religious liberty of Protestantism, and the political liberty of representative government, however impaired and inefficient, as many held, whilst they permitted the extremest differences of opinion, saved England from the excesses which saw no remedy for the canker of institutions but the destruction of the institutions themselves. English Literature, reflecting the general public opinion, received but a very feeble infusion of the destructive force that had rent the French people and the French Church and State asunder. Yet such an upheaving of the whole crust of society; such an armed contest as succeeded between republican licence and monarchical despotism; such a war into which we were plunged, finally to become a struggle for national existence, producing a real heroic time, and stirring up depths of thought which had been stagnant during a long period of tranquillity, or of mere party agitation, these circumstances, unprecedented in their conjunction, had a manifest effect upon our Literature. "Oh, not alone when life flows still do truth A new power and a wider truth were especially marked in the highest expression of ideas, that of Poetry. This outpouring of verse constitutes, in itself, a literary era as remarkable as that of the age of Elizabeth. During the latter three of the six decades of the reign of George the Third, there had been also a vast increase of the number of readers in our country, with a correspondent extension of periodical writing-that form of literature which is the surest indication of a larger public to be addressed. If we adequately bear in mind the expansion of thought that was coincident with the great events of this remarkable period, and trace also the rapid growth of an influential body of readers beyond the narrow circles of the learned and the fashionable, to whom nearly all writers had addressed themselves in the first three decades of this reign, we may find two links by which to connect the rapid and imperfect notices which we now propose to offer, without any attempt at minute criticism, of what is generically termed The Press. About the time when Samuel Johnson died, there appeared a writer who suddenly emerged from a provincial life of sickness and seclusion, after having passed his fiftieth year, to become "the most popular poet of his generation."§ William Cowper was the precursor of the poetical school that sprang up amidst the excitement of the French Revolution. He had many distinctive qualities essentially different from the leaders of that school. He * See De Tocqueville, "Society in France before the Revolution," chap. xiv. + See Ante, vol. vii. chap. v. § Southey, Life of Cowper in Collected Works, chap. i. 1784-1820.] THE POETS-COWPER. 113 was unfamiliar with German modes of thought, and German models of composition. With the exception of one humorous poem, his writings did not assume the narrative form, which was so marked a characteristic of the next period. His first volume, published in 1784, contained the didactic poems, which may almost be termed satires, of Table Talk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Conversation, Retirement. Cowper's poetical talents were known to his intimate friends, and he had previously published the Olney Hymns. But when Mrs. Unwin urged upon him, as an employment that might divert him from thoughts under which his mental powers too often broke down, to produce a work of magnitude, she little expected that some six thousand lines would have been written in a time scarcely exceeding three months. The peculiar character of this first volume was scarcely calculated to win for it a sudden popularity. It was not till after the publication of his second volume, in 1785, containing The Task, that the strong sense, the high morality, the earnest piety, the love of nature, the depth of the home affections, which characterize these poems, began to be fully recognized and duly appreciated. The conventionalities of most of the poets who had preceded Cowper were to be cast aside and forgotten in this manifestation of the power of earnestness and simplicity. The popularity which, with some persons, must have been at first retarded by the strong religious feeling of these poems, was ultimately increased, in what has been denominated "the great religious movement of the end of the last century." Cowper died in 1800; but as a painter of manners he represents the fashions and classes before the French Revolution. Some of the satire belongs to no especial generation. The waste of time in cards and dic; the rank debauch, which suits Clodio's filthy taste, who can "drink five bottles, and bilk the score"-Gorgonius the glutton, "abdominous and wan are general portraits. The novelists "Whose corresponding misses filled the ream will possibly never be extinct. The petit maître parson in Cowper's admirable portraiture is a successor of the gross Trulliber of a former age. Fielding probably never saw the preacher who brings forth the pocket mirror in the pulpit, or with opera-glass watches the slow retiring fair. He might have seen the court chaplain But the churchmen generally of his time were marked by the slovenly neglect and rustic coarseness, which Cowper preferred to the affectation of the clerical coxcomb of his satire. The political profligacy of those times was never more strongly painted than in the picture of the country gentleman, who, having expended his wealth in gaming or building, burns to serve his country, and receives the price of his vote from ministerial grace or private patronage. The venal senator, and the remorseless highwayman, each belong to those good old times: 114 THE POETS-CRABBE. [1784-1820. In those days public corruption and private immorality filled the thinking with apprehension: - "'Tis therefore, sober and good men are sad For England's glory, seeing it wax pale And sickly, while her champions wear their hearts Healthful and undisturb'd by factious fumes, Can dream them trusty to the general weal." Cowper believed that the public men of his time had grown degenerate-" the age of virtuous politics is past." In such a brief view of literary progress as we are now attempting to give, it appears to us important to divide our subject into two periods of very moderate extent. In his great work on the Literature of Europe, Mr. Hallam gives the leading writers in various periods of half a century each. Although such a division has the apparent inconvenience of making a somewhat too distinct line of separation in the works of the same author (as in the case of Shakespere, who wrote at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th), it is far more satisfactory than the plan pursued by an eminent historian of our own time. It is somewhat embarrassing to our chronological notions when we find Rogers and Tennyson in the same chapter of poets, Sharon Turner and Macaulay of historians, and Miss Edgeworth and Thackeray, of novelists. The convenience, if not the necessity, of adopting more manageable eras, and even of dividing in some cases the productions of one man into two eras, may be estimated by reference to the cases of Rogers and Crabbe. The author of the "Pleasures of Memory" published his "Ode to Superstition, and other Poems," in 1786. Crabbe's early poems, "The Library," "The Village," and "The Newspaper," appeared from 1781 to 1784. The "Italy" of Rogers did not appear till 1822; Crabbe's "Tales of the Hall" appeared in 1819. In their early career, Rogers and Crabbe belonged to the generation of Cowper and Burns; in their latter period they belonged to the same age as Byron and Moore. Crabbe, more than any other poet of either of the periods to which he belongs, is a painter of manners. It has been observed by a critic of no common order, that "with all its originality, the poetical genius of Crabbe was acted upon and changed by the growth of new tastes and a new spirit in the times through which he lived. As he lived, indeed, in two eras, so he wrote in two styles."+ His early poems, which are essentially didactic, contain little of the poetical element which is to be found in the strong and impassioned narrative of his later years. "The Library" and "The Newspaper" necessarily deal with the subjects of our own present chapter. The age of great books was gone, the age when an author wrote his one folio, bepraised by poetic friends; when the ponderous gift was accepted by princes; and when "Ladies read the work they could not lift." The age of abstracts, and abridgments, and pamphlets was come,-the age of * So in Alison, "Europe from the Fall of Napoleon," vol. i. chap. 5. "History of English Literature," by George L. Craik, LL.D., 1861, vol. ii. p. 485. 1784-1820.] a folio number once a week. " In "The Library" the "Ancient worthies of Romance are in disgrace; the giants, the knights and the magicians are gone. The Poet accurately describes the quality of the fiction which had succeeded to the "brood of old Romance." The novels of the Sentimental School were in fashion, as well as the Sentimental Comedy. These mawkish productions were "stories of repentant rakes wooing humble nymphs;" or of virtue going to midnight masquerade on purpose to be tried;" or, the letters of the tender Delia to the sympathizing Lucinda. Crabbe's novel-reading experience is also given as a reminiscence of his later period. "Wanderings of the Heart; "Confessions of a Nun; ""Tales of Winters, Summers, Springs, at Bath and Brighton," in which "all was love and flight to Gretna Green;" these were the staple of the Circulating Libraries, then recently called into existence. "The Newspaper" describes that great province of the realms of print as it existed four or five years before the French Revolution. At the date of Crabbe's poem, there were seventy-nine newspapers published in Great Britain and Ireland. Seven years before, there were seventeen in London, of which seven were daily, and one of once a week. The name of Sunday paper was eschewed till "Johnson's Sunday Monitor" appeared, which Crabbe not unjustly satirizes for "the moral essays on his front, and carnal business in the rear." Flourishing with morning papers and evening papers, there were papers of thrice a week and twice a week. Crabbe gives the titles of some members of the literature which he holds in contempt as those vapid sheets,"-Ledgers, Chronicles, Posts, Heralds. One paper, which appeared a year after his poem, "The Daily Universal Register," is remarkable as having been printed and published by John Walter, Printing House Square. The name of that journal, in 1788, was changed to "The Times.” Crabbe had no taste for newspapers. In their politics they were fickle and false;" they were "the poisoned springs from learning's fountain;" "blind guides," "anonymous slanderers." The newspaper editors were "mutual thieves from each brother's hoard; " "what you read in one you read through all." "Their runners ramble day and night, To drag each lurking deed to open light; Some of this satire was no doubt poetical exaggeration; but at that period newspapers had no high character to sustain. The government dreaded and despised them; they were in perpetual conflict with the Parliament about privilege; their contributors were ill-paid; their proprietors and editors had little social respect. How great has been the change! It was during the war that newspapers, such as the Morning Chronicle, became valuable properties. James Perry, the proprietor of that paper, was originally a reporter at a guinea a-week. A payment of this amount for his weekly services was refused by one whose presumption was thus described by one of the most energetic of the newspaper producers:-" We hear much of purse-proud insolence, but poets can sometimes be insolent on the conscious power of talent, as well as vulgar upstarts can be on the conscious power of purse. It would surely have been a more honourable employment than |