CHAPTER II. THE NEW POETRY Dyer-Shenstone-Young's Night Thoughts-James Thomson : The Seasons, The THE BEGINNINGS OF REVOLT Reaction against the dominant ideals of the Augustan school is a salient fact in the history of English poetry during the later 18th century. This reaction began, indeed, while Pope himself was at the summit of his fame, but it gained greatly in volume and influence in the decades immediately preceding the rise of Wordsworth. As it had no programme, no central movement, and no leader, it was for the most part tentative in character, and it sought many avenues of escape from conventions which by little and little were coming to be recognized as deadening and oppressive. Through the resulting confusion it is none the less possible to follow certain well-marked lines of change. Augustan poetry had been in the main a poetry of the intellect; with what has been called " the renaissance of the feelings (a cardinal fact in the Age of Johnson) came a deepening sense of the wonder and mystery of life, and passion and imagination once more asserted their power.1 Augustan poetry, again, confined itself almost entirely to "the Town," and was thus narrowly metropolitan in theme, outlook, and spirit; the new generation of poets began to turn more and more from "the Town" to nature and rural life. This change was accompanied by an ever-increasing interest in man as man, by the emergence of vague ideas (presently reinforced by the teachings of Rousseau) about the need of a "return to nature," and in general by the spread of theories regarding the essential superiority of "nature" to "art." The whole conception of poetry underwent in consequence a profound modification; the emphasis was thrown upon originality and inspiration as contrasted with mere craftsmanship; the poet figured, in the phraseology of the time, as an "enthusiast " rather than as a " wit."2 Interest in other ages meanwhile helped to restore romance to poetry, and this romantic movement is specifically associated with the imitation of Spenser and the old ballads and (in part inspired by this) with a far-reaching "Gothic" or mediaval revival. At the same time, efforts were made to break away from the conventional 1 As early as 1746 we find Joseph Warton recording his conviction that "the fashion of moralizing in verse has been carried too far," and that "invention and imagination" are "the chief faculties of a poet" (Preface to Odes). 2 This new conception finds expression, for example, in Beattie's Minstrel, and was stimulated by Warton's History of English Poetry, and by the legends and literature of the Middle Ages. 3 Cf. Hurd's contention that Gothic" manners provide better material for poetry than those of "heroic" times (Letters on Chivalry and Romance, 1762). diction of Pope and his disciples, and to make poetry speak once more in a simpler and more natural tongue. Finally, the supremacy of the classic couplet was attacked, and experiments made in other media-in the Spenserian stanza, the ode, blank verse, and various other forms. In this chapter we are to deal briefly with a number of men between Pope's early days and the time of Wordsworth, in whose writings, in one or another way, the influences at work in this great transition are apparent. Poets who in this era of change stood broadly for the continuance of the Augustan tradition do not fall within our present scope, and are considered elsewhere (see p. 299). JOHN DYER (? 1699–1758) Life.-Born at Aberglasney, in Carmarthenshire, the son of a solicitor, and educated at Westminster, Dyer gave up the law to study art under Jonathan Richardson, a painter and author. He also visited Italy, and on his return took holy orders, and held several small livings in Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. He married on his first preferment, and died rector of Belchford, near Horncastle. Dyer was a man of reputable life and scanty ambition. He belonged to no literary circle, and spent his later days in a country where his delight in natural scenery can hardly have been satisfied. Works.-Grongar Hill and The Country Walk (in Lewis's Miscellany, 1726); Grongar Hill (second version, 1727); The Ruins of Rome (1740); The Fleece (1757). Nature. Dyer must have carried to Westminster a boyish love for the scenery of his Welsh hills, and renewed this love during his brief sojourn in his father's office. Wordsworth's sonnet to him speaks of his hallowing with musical delight the soft scenes through which his childhood strayed. Metrically Grongar Hill is a close imitation of Milton's L'Allegro : Yet Time has seen, that lifts the low, And level lays the lofty brow, Has seen this broken pile complete, Big with the vanity of state; But transient is the smile of Fate ! A little rule, a little sway, A sun-beam in a winter's day, And see the rivers how they run, Gilbert White recognized in all Dyer's work an exact observation of nature, and in this respect set him above Milton, whose eyesight was never strong enough to be exact. The Ruins of Rome shows that Dyer regarded objects rather with a poet's than with a painter's eye. On reading this work Gray risked the ridicule of Horace Walpole by asserting that Dyer “has more of poetry in his imagination than any of our number." Gray adds that Dyer was "rough and injudicious." The Fleece is a more ambitious work, and at times labours under the pomposities of contemporary poetic diction. On the other hand, there is in it no false attempt to oppose the simplicity of a country life to the activities of a manufacturing town. Dyer has no more interest in the shearing of a Lincolnshire sheep than in the Birmingham factory where the shears are forged. He is aware that either scene has a beauty of its own, and his poem becomes, as Wordsworth says, a living landscape, fair and bright. Such appreciation was not universal among Dyer's contemporaries. Fleet Street criticism, as represented by Johnson, declared it impossible to "write poetically of serges and druggets." It annoyed the dictator that many people talked "gravely of that excellent poem The Fleece." The literary rebellion was as yet in its infancy, and Horace Walpole, who had started the rebellion in architecture and in fiction, failed to see that he had an ally in Dyer. WILLIAM SHENSTONE (1714-63) Life. Born at Halesowen, near Dudley, Shenstone was educated at the local grammar school and at Oxford. In 1745 he went to live at the Leasowes, a house at Halesowen inherited from his grandfather. Here his time and money were given to landscape gardening in the style which was imitated from him on a much larger scale by Lord Temple at Stowe. He died a bachelor. Works.-Poems (1737); The Judgment of Hercules (1741); The Schoolmistress (second version, 1742); The Pastoral Ballad and other poems in Dodsley's Collection (1748-58). Character. Heavy and shy, Shenstone's ambition was to be known as the creator of the most beautiful garden in England; but he did not enjoy it. He hankered for town, but could have made no figure in literary society. "Poor man!" wrote Gray," he was always wishing for money, for fame, and other distinctions; and his whole philosophy consisted in living against his will in retirement, and in a place which his taste had adorned, but which he enjoyed only when people of note came to see and commend it." Style. Shenstone lives by the lilt in his lyrics which fixes them on the memory of childhood. There is no other poetic quality in such a line as "My banks they are furnish'd with bees," but no effort can make us forget it. Cowper's use of the trisyllabic metres was probably suggested by Shenstone's, and Byron, Moore, and others gave them vogue. There is some feeling in The Schoolmistress, where the Spenserian stanza is used for a humble theme, and in The Pastoral Ballad. The Elegies, perhaps in part autobiographical, had enough pathos to win the admiration of Burns. His fancy brings us at times a reminiscence of Milton's youth. Here, in cool grot and mossy cell, Darts through yon lines her quivering beams, We frisk it near these crystal streams. On a Tablet against a Root-House. EDWARD YOUNG (1681-1765) Life and Character.-Edward Young was born in 1681 at Upham Rectory, near Winchester. In 1708 he became a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and when nearly fifty, after many attempts to find a channel for his ambitions in secular life, he entered the Church, and was appointed one of the royal chaplains and rector of Welwyn, Herts. But he did not receive the preferment he had expected, and though his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Lee in 1731 made him rich, he closed his long life (1765) a disappointed man. Young was a toady and place-hunter of the most shameless kind, and his relations with the Duke of Wharton show his utter indifference to the moral character of his patrons. Works. His principal works are: The Last Day (1713), in classic couplets, and full of the fustian which with Young too often did duty for the sublime. The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love (1713), a vapid poem, also in classic couplets, on Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford. Three tragedies-Busiris (1719), The Revenge (1721), and The Brothers (1728; performed 1753)—things of sound and fury with no real dramatic power. Love of Fame, or the Universal Passion (1725-8), seven satires which, though careless in style, have much vigour and wit. It is important to note that they preceded Pope's work in the same field. The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742–4), a pretentious and bombastic poem in nine books, on life, death, and immortality, has many quotable lines and occasional passages of genuine sublimity. Its atmosphere is, however, oppressive, its sentiment hollow, its philosophy thoroughly unwholesome. Characteristics.-Young's radical insincerity ruined his work when he attempted the higher ranges of thought and passion. As a poet of the transition he is important on the side of form, because in Night Thoughts he abandoned the classic couplet and took to blank verse. In his remarkable Conjectures on Original Composition, written when he was seventy-seven (1759) in the form of a letter to Richardson, he not only defended blank verse, but argued that the time had come for the poet to reject models and rely upon his own inspiration, and that genius was greater than rules. The prevailing gloom of his principal poem must also be recognized as an interesting historical feature; Night Thoughts did much to spread the spirit of romantic melancholy both in English and in Continental literatures.' JAMES THOMSON (1700-48) Life and Character.-James Thomson was born at Ednam, Roxburghshire (1700), bred at Jedburgh and at Edinburgh University, and was destined by his father to follow his own calling in the Presbyterian ministry. But the pulpit not being to his taste, he resolved to try his fortunes in London. The publication of Winter (1726) gave him reputation, and the generosity of patrons and, later, various sinecures and a pension, provided him with the means of living at his ease. He died a bachelor in 1748. Thomson was an amiable man, who had many friends and not a single enemy. Though he died in middle life, his lazy habits had already made him "more fat than bard beseems" (The Castle of Indolence, i. 68). Works.-The Seasons (1726-30), a descriptive poem in four books; Britannia (1729) and Liberty (1735-7), political poems, the only interest of which for us lies in the fact that, like The Seasons, they are in blank verse. Plays: Sophonisba (1729); Agamemnon (1738); Edward and Eleanora (1739); The Masque of Alfred (1740), in collaboration with David Mallet (the famous "Rule, Britannia,” in Act II. is probably from Thomson's pen); Tancred and Sigismunda (1745); Coriolanus (performed 1749). There is nothing noteworthy about any of these plays. The Castle of Indolence (1748), a poem in the Spenserian stanza, describes in Canto i. the enchanted castle of the wizard Indolence and his victims, and in Canto ii. the conquest of Indolence by the Knight of Arts and Industry. Characteristics.-Thomson's fame rests entirely upon The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, and these suffice to give him a high place among our poets of the second order. They are also among the most notable poems of the transition. The Seasons, the first important piece of 18th-century blank verse, is also the first long poem the interest of which is centred in nature instead of man. In many ways it belongs to its age. Its vocabulary is highly Latinized; its style in general is ornate and rhetorical; examples of the conventional poetic diction abound; the movement of the blank verse often suggests the couplet. But Thomson none the less writes as a genuine lover of nature, who has seen and studied nature at first hand and for him 1 Mention may be made of a short poem, The Grave (published 1743, though written many years earlier), by a Scottish minister, Robert Blair (1699-1746), as another noteworthy production of the same school. |