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English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History by Henry Coppee

H >> Henry Coppee >> English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History




A glance at contemporary history will give us an intelligent clue to our
literary inquiries, and cause us to observe the historical character of
the literature.

To a casual observer, the reign of Queen Anne seems particularly
untroubled and prosperous. English history calls it the time of "Good
Queen Anne;" and it is referred to with great unction by the _laudator
temporis acti_, in unjust comparison with the period which has since
intervened, as well as with that which preceded it.


QUEEN ANNE.--The queen was a Protestant, as opposed to the Romanists and
Jacobites; a faithful wife, and a tender mother in her memory of several
children who died young. She was merciful, pure, and gracious to her
subjects. Her reign was tolerant. There was plenty at home; rebellion and
civil war were at least latent. Abroad, England was greatly distinguished
by the victories of Marlborough and Eugene. But to one who looks through
this veil of prosperity, a curious history is unfolded. The fires of
faction were scarcely smouldering. It was the transition period between
the expiring dynasty of the direct line of Stuarts and the coming of the
Hanoverian house. Women took part in politics; sermons like that of
Sacheverell against the dissenters and the government were thundered from
the pulpit. Volcanic fires were at work; the low rumblings of an
earthquake were heard from time to time, and gave constant cause of
concern to the queen and her statesmen. Men of rank conspired against each
other; the moral license of former reigns seems to have been forgotten in
political intrigue. When James II. had been driven out in 1688, the
English conscience compromised on the score of the divine right of kings,
by taking his daughter Mary and her husband as joint monarchs. To do this,
they affected to call the king's son by his second wife, born in that
year, a pretender. It was said that he was the child of another woman, and
had been brought to the queen's bedside in a warming-pan, that James might
be able to present, thus fraudulently, a Roman Catholic heir to the
throne. In this they did the king injustice, and greater injustice to the
queen, Maria de Modena, a pleasing and innocent woman, who had, by her
virtues and personal popularity alone, kept the king on his throne, in
spite of his pernicious measures.

When the dynasty was overthrown, the parliament had presented to William
and Mary _A Bill of Rights_, in which the people's grievances were set
forth, and their rights enumerated and insisted upon; and this was
accepted by the monarchs as a condition of their tenure.

Mary died in 1695, and when William followed her, in 1702, Anne, the
second daughter of James, ascended the throne. Had she refused the
succession, there would have been a furious war between the Jacobites and
the Hanoverians. In 1714, Anne died childless, but her reign had bridged
the chasm between the experiment of William and Mary and the house of
Hanover. In default of direct heirs to Queen Anne, the succession was in
this Hanoverian house; represented in the person of the Electress Sophia,
the granddaughter of James I., through his daughter, Elizabeth of Bohemia.
But this lineage of blood had lost all English affinities and sympathies.

Meanwhile, the child born to James II., in 1688, had grown to be a man,
and stood ready, on the death of Queen Anne, to re-affirm his claim to the
throne. It was said that, although, on account of the plottings of the
Jacobites, a price had been put upon his head, the queen herself wished
him to succeed, and had expressed scruples about her own right to reign.
She greatly disliked the family of Hanover, and while she was on her
death-bed, the pretender had been brought to England, in the hope that she
would declare him her successor. The elements of discord asserted
themselves still more strongly. Whigs and Tories in politics, Romanists
and Protestants in creed, Jacobite and Hanoverian in loyalty, opposed each
other, harassing the feeble queen, and keeping the realm in continual
ferment.


WHIGS AND TORIES.--The Whigs were those who declared that kingly power was
solely for the good of the subject; that the reformed creed was the
religion of the realm; that James had forfeited the throne, and that his
son was a pretender; and that the power justly passed to the house of
Hanover. The Tories asserted that monarchs ruled by _divine right_; and
that if, when religion was at stake, the king might be deposed, this could
not affect the succession.

Anne escaped her troubles by dying, in 1714. Sophia, the Electress of
Hanover, who had only wished to live, she said, long enough to have
engraved upon her tombstone: "Here lies Sophia, Queen of England," died,
in spite of this desire, only a few weeks before the queen; and the new
heir to the throne was her son, George Louis of Brunswick-Luneburg,
electoral prince of Hanover.

He came cautiously and selfishly to the throne of England; he felt his
way, and left a line of retreat open; he brought not a spice of honest
English sentiment, but he introduced the filth of the electoral court. As
gross in his conduct as Charles II., he had indeed a prosperous reign,
because it was based upon a just and tolerant Constitution; because the
English were in reality not governed by a king, but by well-enacted laws.

The effect of all this political turmoil upon the leading men in England
had been manifest; both parties had been expectant, and many of the
statesmen had been upon the fence, ready to get down on one side or the
other, according to circumstances. Marlborough left the Tories and joined
the Whigs; Swift, who had been a Whig, joined the Tories. The queen's
first ministry had consisted of Whigs and the more moderate Tories; but as
she fell away from the Marlboroughs, she threw herself into the hands of
the Tories, who had determined, and now achieved, the downfall of
Marlborough.

Such was the reign of good Queen Anne. With this brief sketch as a
preliminary, we return to the literature, which, like her coin, bore her
image and carried it into succeeding reigns. In literature, the age of
Queen Anne extends far beyond her lifetime.


ADDISON.--The principal name of this period is that of Joseph Addison. He
was the son of the rector of Milston, in Wiltshire, and was born in 1672.
Old enough in 1688 to appreciate the revolution, as early as he could
wield his pen, he used it in the cause of the new monarchs. At the age of
fifteen he was sent from the Charter-House to Oxford; and there he wrote
some Latin verses, for which he was rewarded by a university scholarship.
After pursuing his studies at Oxford, he began his literary career. In his
twenty-second year he wrote a poetical address to Dryden; but he chiefly
sought preferment through political poetry. In 1695 he wrote a poem to the
king, which was well received; and in 1699 he received a pension of L300.
In 1701 he went upon the Continent, and travelled principally in France
and Italy. On his return, he published his travels, and a _Poetical
Epistle from Italy_, which are interesting as delineating continental
scenes and manners in that day. Of the travels, Dr. Johnson said, "they
might have been written at home;" but he praised the poetical epistle as
the finest of Addison's poetical works.

Upon the accession of Queen Anne, he continued to pay his court in verse.
When the great battle of Blenheim was fought, in 1704, he at once
published an artificial poem called _The Campaign_, which has received the
fitting name of the _Rhymed Despatch_. Eulogistic of Marlborough and
descriptive of his army manoeuvres, its chief value is to be found in
its historical character, and not in any poetic merit. It was a political
paper, and he was rewarded for it by the appointment of Commissioner of
Appeals, in which post he succeeded the philosopher Locke.

The spirit of this poem is found in the following lines:

Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays,
And round the hero cast a borrowed blaze;
Marlboro's exploits appear divinely bright,
And proudly shine in their own native light.

If we look for a contrast to this poem, indicating with it the two
political sides of the question, it may be found in Swift's tract on _The
Conduct of the Allies_, which asserts that the war had been maintained to
gratify the ambition and greed of Marlborough, and also for the benefit of
the Allies. Addison was appointed, as a reward for his poem,
Under-Secretary of State.

To this extent Addison was the historian by purpose. A moderate partisan,
he eulogized King William, Marlborough, Lord Somers, Lord Halifax, and
others, and thus commended himself to the crown; and in several elegant
articles in _The Spectator_, he sought to mitigate the fierce party spirit
of the time.


SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY.--But it is the unconscious historian with whom we
are most charmed, and by whom we are best instructed. It is in this
character that Addison presents himself in his numerous contributions to
_The Spectator_, _The Tatler_, and _The Guardian_. Amid much that is now
considered pedantic and artificial, and which, in those faults, marks the
age, are to be found as striking and truthful delineations of English life
and society in that day as Chaucer has given us of an earlier period.

Those who no longer read _The Spectator_ as a model of style and learning,
must continue to prize it for these rare historic teachings. The men and
women walk before us as in some antique representation in a social
festival, when grandmothers' brocades are taken out, when curious fashions
are displayed, when Honoria and Flavia, Fidelia and Gloriana dress and
speak and ogle and flirt just as Addison saw and photographed them. We
have their subjects of interest, their forms of gossip, the existing
abuses of the day, their taste in letters, their opinions upon the works
of literature, in all their freshness.

The fullest and most systematic of these social delineations is found in
the sketch of _The Club_ and _Sir Roger de Coverley_. The creation of
character is excellent. Each member, individual and distinct, is also the
type of a class.


THE CLUB.--There is Will Honeycomb, the old beau, "a gentleman who,
according to his years, should be in the decline of his life, but having
ever been careful of his person, and always had an easy fortune, time has
made but very little impression, either by wrinkles on his forehead or
traces on his brain." He knew from what French woman this manner of
curling the hair came, who invented hoops, and whose vanity to show her
foot brought in short dresses. He is a woman-killer, sceptical about
marriage; and at length he gives the fair sex ample satisfaction for his
cruelty and egotism by marrying, unknown to his friends, a farmer's
daughter, whose face and virtues are her only fortune.

Captain Sentry, the nephew of Sir Roger, is, it may be supposed, the
essayist's ideal of what an English officer should be--a courageous
soldier and a modest gentleman.

Sir Andrew Freeport is the retired merchant, drawn to the life. He is
moderate in politics, as expediency in that age would suggest. Thoroughly
satisfied of the naval supremacy of England, he calls the sea, "the
British Common." He is the founder of his own fortune, and is satisfied to
transmit to posterity an unsullied name, a goodly store of wealth, and the
title he has so honorably won.

In _The Templar_, we have a satire upon a certain class of lawyers. It is
indicative of that classical age, that he understands Aristotle and
Longinus better than Littleton and Coke, and is happy in anything but
law--a briefless barrister, but a gentleman of consideration.

But the most charming, the most living portrait is that of Sir Roger de
Coverley, an English country gentleman, as he ought to be, and as not a
few really were. What a generous humanity for all wells forth from his
simple and loving heart! He has such a mirthful cast in his behavior that
he is rather loved than esteemed. Repulsed by a fair widow, several years
before, he keeps his sentiment alive by wearing a coat and doublet of the
same cut that was in fashion at the time, which, he tells us, has been out
and in twelve times since he first wore it. All the young women profess to
love him, and all the young men are glad of his company.

Last of all is the clergyman, whose piety is all reverence, and who talks
and acts "as one who is hastening to the object of all his wishes, and
conceives hope from his decays and infirmities."

It is said that Addison, warned by the fate of Cervantes,--whose noble
hero, Don Quixote, was killed by another pen,--determined to conduct Sir
Roger to the tomb himself; and the knight makes a fitting end. He
congratulates his nephew, Captain Sentry, upon his succession to the
inheritance; he is thoughtful of old friends and old servants. In a word,
so excellent was his life, and so touching the story of his death, that we
feel like mourners at a real grave. Indeed he did live, and still
lives,--one type of the English country gentleman one hundred and fifty
years ago. Other types there were, not so pleasant to contemplate; but
Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley and Fielding's Squire Allworthy vindicate
their class in that age.


ADDISON'S HYMNS.--Addison appears to us also as the writer of beautiful
hymns, and has paraphrased some of the Psalms. In this, like Watts, he
catered to a decided religious craving of that day. In a Protestant realm,
and by reason of religious controversy, the fine old hymns of the Latin
church, which are now renewing their youth in an English dress, had fallen
into disrepute: hymnody had, to some extent, superseded the plain chant.
Hymns were in demand. Poets like Addison and Watts provided for this new
want; and from the beauty of his few contributions, our great regret is
that Addison wrote so few. Every one he did write is a gem in many
collections. Among them we have that admirable paraphrase of the
_Twenty-third Psalm_:

The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
And feed me with a shepherd's care;

and the hymn

When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys.

None, however, is so beautiful, stately, and polished as the Divine Ode,
so pleasant to all people, little and large,--

The spacious firmament on high.


HIS PERSON AND CHARACTER.--In closing this brief sketch of Addison, a few
words are necessary as to his personality, and an estimate of his powers.
In 1716 he married the Countess-Dowager of Warwick, and parted with
independence to live with a coronet. His married life was not happy. The
lady was cold and exacting; and, it must be confessed, the poet loved a
bottle at the club-room or tavern better than the luxuries of Holland
House; and not infrequently this conviviality led him to excess. He died
in 1719, in his forty-eighth year, and made a truly pious end. He wished,
he said, to atone for any injuries he had done to others, and sent for his
sceptical and dissolute step-son, Lord Warwick, to show him how a
Christian could die. A monument has been erected to his memory in the
Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, and the closing words of the
inscription upon it calls him "the honor and delight of the English
nation."

As a man, he was grave and retiring: he had a high opinion of his own
powers; in company he was extremely diffident; in the main, he was moral,
just, and consistent. His intemperance was in part the custom of the age
and in part a physical failing, and it must have been excessive to be
distinguished in that age. In the Latin-English of Dr. Johnson, "It is not
unlikely that Addison was first seduced to excess by the manumission which
he obtained from the servile timidity of his sober hours." This failing
must be regarded as a blot on his fame.

He was the most accomplished writer of his own age, and in elegance of
style superior to all who had gone before him.

In the words of his epitaph, his prose papers "encouraged the good and
reformed the improvident, tamed the wicked, and in some degree made them
in love with virtue." His poetry is chiefly of historical value, in that
it represents so distinctly the Artificial School; but it is now very
little read. His drama entitled _Cato_ was modelled upon the French drama
of the classical school, with its singular preservation of the unities.
But his contributions to _The Spectator_ and other periodicals are
historically of great value. Here he abandons the artificial school;
nothing in his delineations of character is simply statuesque or
pictorial. He has done for us what the historians have left undone. They
present processions of automata moving to the sound of trumpet and drum,
ushered by Black Rod or Garter King-at-arms; but in Addison we find that
Promethean heat which relumes their life; the galvanic motion becomes a
living stride; the puppet eyes emit fire; the automata are men. Thus it
is, that, although _The Spectator_, once read as a model of taste and
style, has become antiquated and has been superseded, it must still be
resorted to for its life-like portraiture of men and women, manners and
customs, and will be found truer and more valuable for these than history
itself.




CHAPTER XXVI.

STEELE AND SWIFT.


Sir Richard Steele. Periodicals. The Crisis. His Last Days. Jonathan
Swift--Poems. The Tale of a Tub. Battle of the Books. Pamphlets. M. B.
Drapier. Gulliver's Travels. Stella and Vanessa. His Character and
Death.



Contemporary with Addison, and forming with him a literary fraternity,
Steele and Swift were besides men of distinct prominence, and clearly
represent the age in which they lived.


SIR RICHARD STEELE.--If Addison were chosen as the principal literary
figure of the period, a sketch of his life would be incomplete without a
large mention of his lifelong friend and collaborator, Steele. If to Bacon
belongs the honor of being the first writer and the namer of the English
_essay_, Steele may claim that of being the first periodical essayist.

He was born in Dublin, in 1671, of English parents; his father being at
the time secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He received his
early education at the Charter-House school, in London, an institution
which has numbered among its pupils many who have gained distinguished
names in literature. Here he met and formed a permanent friendship with
Addison. He was afterwards entered as a student at Merton College, Oxford;
but he led there a wild and reckless life, and leaving without a degree,
he enlisted as a private in the Horse Guards. Through the influence of his
friends, he was made a cornet, and afterwards a captain, in the
Fusileers; but this only gave him opportunity for continued dissipation.
His principles were better than his conduct; and, haunted by conscience,
he made an effort to reform himself by writing a devotional work called
_The Christian Hero_; but there was such a contrast between his precepts
and his life, that he was laughed at by the town. Between 1701 and 1704 he
produced his three comedies. _The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode_; _The
Tender Husband_, and _The Lying Lover_. The first two were successful upon
the stage, but the last was a complete failure. Disgusted for the time
with the drama, he was led to find his true place as the writer of those
light, brilliant, periodical essays which form a prominent literary
feature of the reign of Queen Anne. These _Essays_ were comments,
suggestions, strictures, and satires upon the age. They were of immediate
and local interest then, and have now a value which the writers did not
foresee: they are unconscious history.


PERIODICALS.--The first of these periodicals was _The Tatler_, a penny
sheet, issued tri-weekly, on post-days. The first number appeared on the
12th of April, 1709, and asserted the very laudable purpose "to expose the
deceits, sins, and vanities of the former age, and to make virtue,
simplicity, and plain-dealing the law of social life." "For this purpose,"
in the words of Dr. Johnson,[34] "nothing is so proper as the frequent
publication of short papers, which we read not as study, but amusement. If
the subject be slight, the treatise is short. The busy may find time, and
the idle may find patience." One _nom de plume_ of Steele was _Isaac
Bickerstaff_, which he borrowed from Swift, who had issued party-pamphlets
under that name.

_The Tatler_ was a success. The fluent pen of Addison gave it valuable
assistance; and in January, 1711, it was merged into, rather than
superseded by, _The Spectator_, which was issued six days in the week.

In this new periodical, Steele wrote the paper containing the original
sketch of Sir Roger de Coverley and The Club; but, as has been already
said, Addison adopted, elaborated, and finished this in several later
papers. Steele had been by far the larger contributor to _The Tatler_. Of
all the articles in _The Spectator_, Steele wrote two hundred and forty,
and Addison two hundred and seventy-four; the rest were by various hands.
In March, 1713, when _The Spectator_ was commencing its seventh volume,
_The Guardian_ made its appearance. For the first volume of _The
Guardian_, Addison wrote but one paper; but for the second he wrote more
than Steele. Of the one hundred and seventy-six numbers of that
periodical, eighty-two of the papers were by Steele and fifty-three by
Addison. If the writings of Addison were more scholarly and elegant, those
of Steele were more vivacious and brilliant; and together they have
produced a series of essays which have not been surpassed in later times,
and which are vividly delineative of their own.


THE CRISIS.--The career of Steele was varied and erratic. He held several
public offices, was a justice of the peace, and a member of parliament. He
wrote numerous political tracts, which are not without historical value.
For one pamphlet of a political character, entitled _The Crisis_, he was
expelled from parliament for libel; but upon the death of Queen Anne, he
again found himself in favor. He was knighted in 1715, and received
several lucrative appointments.

He was an eloquent orator, and as a writer rapid and brilliant, but not
profound. Even thus, however, he catered to an age at once artificial and
superficial. Very observant of what he saw, he rushed to his closet and
jotted down his views in electrical words, which made themselves
immediately and distinctly felt.


HIS LAST DAYS.--Near the close of his life he produced a very successful
comedy, entitled _The Conscious Lover_, which would have been of pecuniary
value to him, were it not that he was already overwhelmed with debt. His
end was a sad one; but he reaped what his extravagance and recklessness
had sown. Shattered in health and ruined in fortune, he retreated from the
great world into homely retirement in Wales, where he lived, poor and
hidden, in a humble cottage at Llangunnor. His end was heralded by an
attack of paralysis, and he died in 1729.

After his death, his letters were published; and in the private history
which they unfold, he appears, notwithstanding all his follies, in the
light of a tender husband and of an amiable and unselfish man. He had
principle, but he lacked resolution; and the wild, vacillating character
of his life is mirrored in his writings, where _The Christian Hero_ stands
in singular contrast to the comic personages of his dramas. He was a
genial critic. His exuberant wit and humor reproved without wounding; he
was not severe enough to be a public censor, nor pedantic enough to be the
pedagogue of an age which often needed the lash rather than the gentle
reproof, and upon which a merciful clemency lost its end if not its
praises. He deserves credit for an attempt, however feeble, to reward
virtue upon the stage, after the wholesale rewards which vice had reaped
in the age of Charles II.

Steele has been overshadowed, in his connection with Addison, by the more
dignified and consistent career, the greater social respectability, and
the more elegant and scholarly style of his friend; and yet in much that
they jointly accomplished, the merit of Steele is really as great, and
conduces much to the reputation of Addison. The one husbanded and
cherished his fame; the other flung it away or lavished it upon his
colleagues. As contributors to history, they claim an equal share of our
gratitude and praise.


JONATHAN SWIFT.--The grandfather of Swift was vicar of Goodrich, in
Herefordshire. His father and mother were both English, but he was born in
Dublin, in the year 1667. A posthumous child, he came into the world seven
months after his father's death. From his earliest youth, he deplored the
circumstances among which his lot had been cast. He was dependent upon his
uncle, Godwin Swift, himself a poor man; but was not grateful for his
assistance, always saying that his uncle had given him the education of a
dog. At the University of Dublin, where he was entered, he did not bear a
good character: he was frequently absent from his duties and negligent of
his studies; and although he read history and poetry, he was considered
stupid as well as idle. He was more than once admonished and suspended,
but at length received his degree, _Speciali gratia_; which special act of
grace implied that he had not fairly earned it. Piqued by this, he set to
work in real earnest, and is said to have studied eight hours a day for
eight years. Thus, from an idle and unsuccessful collegian, he became a
man of considerable learning and a powerful writer.

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