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That, like the circle bounding earth and skies,
Allures from far, yet, as I follow, flies;
My fortune leads to traverse realms alone,
And find no spot of all the world my own.

In this spirit of pensive melancholy The Traveller tells of the countries he has visited in a vain search for happiness, only to discover that happiness is not created by externals, but is implanted deep in man's own nature.

Vain, very vain, my weary search to find
That bliss which only centres in the mind:
Why have I stray'd from pleasure and repose,
To seek a good each government bestows?
In every government, though terrors reign,
Though tyrant kings, or tyrant laws restrain,
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,
Our own felicity we make or find.

In 1770 appeared Goldsmith's second great poem, The Deserted Village. It was exceedingly popular. In his earlier poem (lines 397-420) the poet had dealt with the sorrows of those forced by careless luxury to seek a relief from poverty by emigration. In The Deserted Village Goldsmith elaborates the theme. He sees. the village,

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,

not as it really was in its days of prosperity, but transformed by the light of memory into a beauty not its own. The village and its chief characters are described with a sweet simplicity that has made the poem dear to the heart of all who know it. Then the poet turns from this picture of the village in prosperity, and shows it in decay:

Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour,
Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power.
Here as I take my solitary rounds,

Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruin'd grounds,
And, many a year elaps'd, return to view

Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew,
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train,

Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain.

Goldsmith wrote a number of light society verses, the best known being Retaliation (1774) and The Haunch of Venison (1776). Edwin and Angelina (1765) is an attempt at the ballad style of poetry, which Bishop Percy's Reliques of that year was making popular.

Of Goldsmith's songs, the best is the well-known one in The Vicar of Wakefield (1766):

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?

(2,352)

11 a

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye,

To give repentance to her lover,

And wring his bosom, is-to die.

That was the best poem the 18th century could write on faithless love, until Burns took a higher note, and expressed a deeper, more intimate emotion in

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts.-PRIOR: The Writings of Matthew Prior (Poems on Several Occasions; Dialogues of the Dead, etc.), ed. A. R. Waller (2 vols., Cambridge, 1905-7).—PARNELL: Poetical Works, ed. G. A. Aitken (1894). -GAY: Poetical Works, ed. J. Underhill (Muses' Library, 2 vols., 1893); The Beggar's Opera (Secker, 1920).-GOLDSMITH: Complete Poetical Works, ed. A. Dobson (World's Classics, 1906).

CHAPTER 4. JOURNALISM AND THE ESSAY

Journalism: Defoe as Publicist-The Periodical Essay: Steele, Addison, Swift; Other
contributors, imitators, and successors

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ESSAY

The essay (meaning, in the language of Montaigne, its inventor, an attempt') originated as a repository of casual ideas on men and matters. In the hands of Montaigne it was less a literary type than a means of thinking aloud and of communicating his thoughts to his friends. In England it was cultivated by Bacon and by more than a score of other humanists. But as literature became more formalized and academic in the latter half of the 17th century, its practice gradually passed out of fashion, or was lost among memoirs, prefaces, pamphlets, maxims, and characters. As the essay was never effectively revived on the Continent, it was not under normal circumstances likely to be again cultivated in England, especially as Restoration and Georgian literature was so strongly influenced by French or classical models. Nevertheless, a combination of circumstances, peculiar to this country, gave a group of humanists the opportunity of creating it anew. Their work appeared in a detached, fragmentary form, like the essays of Montaigne, Bacon, or Cowley, and so it has always been classified in the same category. But in method and scope it was an achievement of marked originality, and exercised a profound influence on the prose style, and indeed on the civilization of their epoch.

The Early Newspapers.-In origin, the Addisonian essay had little or nothing in common with the Renaissance essay, but belongs to the history of the daily press. Since the beginning of the Civil War England had been the home of corantos, diurnals, and news-sheets. But, thanks to the Licensing Act (passed 1662), the 17th century produced no serious attempt at journalism, except the London Gazette, founded (1666) under the immediate control of the Under-secretary of State, with the office of Gazetteer attached as a ministerial appointment. When the Act expired in 1679, a King's Proclamation in 1680 forbade printed matter to be published without licence. In 1685 the Licensing Act was renewed for seven years, but collapsed in 1688. Thus, from the time of William's accession, news-sheets and Mercuries began to multiply. In 1690 John Dunton hit on the ingenious idea of publishing the Athenian Gazette, afterwards changed to the Athenian Mercury, a periodical to answer questions; in 1702 the Daily Courant began its long career till 1735; and on February 17, 1704, a restless genius, a manufacturer of Dutch tiles, who had already attracted attention by his satires and pamphlets, brought out the first 1 Montaigne, Essais, II. 10.

weekly number of A Review of the Affairs of France and of all Europe, as influenced by that Nation.

DANIEL DEFOE (1663-1731)

3 1641

The Man. This literary adventurer was Daniel Defoe. The son of a London butcher, he began life as a pamphleteer in 1791 and soon showed himself to possess that grasp of details and that intuitive foreknowledge of events out of which great journalists and social writers are made. In 1697 An Essay upon Projects, while proposing various social and economic improvements such as enlarging the Bank of England, paving the highways, instituting friendly societies, reforming the bankruptcy laws, and abolishing press-gangs-had displayed an insight into the manners and morals of his contemporaries, which was soon to prove one of the chief qualifications of the essay writer. Thus Defoe was one of the first to argue, even in that age of wits and scholars, that the "true-hearted merchant" with his knowledge of changing marts and travel is "the most intelligent man in the world." He showed how the habit of begging is formed, how the gambling spirit grows, how the very nature of some institutions encourages swindling and imposture; he explained and illustrated the mental as well as moral weakness of swearing, and pleaded eloquently for the higher education of women

[graphic]

Daniel Defoe.

and for a more humane treatment of lunatics.

Defoe's Journals, Pamphlets, etc.-Yet neither in his Poor Man's Plea (1698) noi in his Consolidator (1705) did he fulfil the promise of An Essay upon Projects. He could not keep his attention fixed on the private conduct and pursuits of his neighbours; he was always harking back to politics and public controversy. Besides, though his prose is vigorous, fluent, and homely, he had not cultivated the subtle. persuasiveness of style without which the public does not care to read about its own manners and mannerisms. The same is true of his Review. This remarkable venture into journalism, which ran with several changes of name, for the most part tri-weekly, from February 1704 to June 1713, is an admirable attempt to estimate the forces . of international politics, and to weigh the merits of commercial and ecclesiastical questions at home. But when he turned to the culture and conduct of his age, he

created nothing better than Mercure Scandale; or Advice from the Scandalous Club, being a Weekly History of Nonsense, Impertinence, Vice, and Debauchery, a supplement to the Review which merely records any private or official act worth exposing to the ridicule of his readers. This periodical is by no means Defoe's only contribution to the progress of social journalism. Some ten years later he was to return to the investigation of city morals and manners, and was then to find highly developed organs of expression and a large and appreciative public of readers (see p. 326). But for the moment the career of a government agent and pamphleteer had too many attractions, especially as the only other kind of periodicals which catered for the polite world were the Poetical Courant (1706), which published every Saturday contributions in verse; The Diverting Muse (1707), which undertook to produce a poem on any subject suggested by a correspondent; Muses Mercury (1707), a repository of current verse and of theatrical notices; The British Apollo (1708-11), or Curious Amusements for the Ingenious; to which are added the Most Material Occurrences, Foreign and Domestic.

RICHARD STEELE (1672-1729)

It was at this juncture that a rather irresponsible "man about Town," Richard Steele, who, born in Dublin in 1672, had been a playwright, tractarian, and cavalry officer, plunged into journalism, and developed a new literary type out of the Mercuries, reviews, observators, and gazettes. He was the first venturer to perceive that up till now non-political essays had been addressed to the wrong public. As on the Continent, art and letters were still tempted to draw their inspiration from the court. In France this tendency bore good fruit; but, with the fall of the Stuart dynasty and with the accession of an alien and unpopular prince, the English monarchy had lost its hold on the nation. At the same time the growth of commerce was giving importance to the middle class, and, by multiplying the comforts of the home, had brought about an age of domesticity. For the brief space of about two generations, conventionality, regularity, and decorum became powerful influences in civilization. They were soon to degenerate into philistinism; but for the time being they brought culture and humanity into the narrow, unrefined lives of the democracy. Such tendencies, if confined to the parlours and tea-tables of the British citizen, would probably have remained undiscovered by literature, at any rate till the age of Richardson or of Cowper. But by a lucky accident the movement had created for itself a kind of unostentatious publicity in the coffeehouses. Thanks to the Londoner's passion for club life, this new type of tavern had multiplied enormously since the Civil War. Every house had its distinctive clientèle, where the frequenters learnt to respect each other's opinions and to tolerate each other's eccentricities, and a humanist who cared to go the round of these institutions could study at will all the shades of London character and sentiment.

The "Tatler" (1709–11).—The man who grasped these possibilities, and opened

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