novelty has too soon laid aside." Out of these famous concerts sprang the Handel Commemoration of 1784. But though much good work was done in nearly every branch, the general level of taste and feeling was not very high in any of the arts at the end of the eighteenth century.

17. Literature and language faithfully mirrored back the age. The poets lacked passion and imagination, and were fast bound by self-imposed rules. Their favourite

Literature. metre was the heroic couplet, their favourite themes

were satire, compliment, and criticism. The tendencies of the time were best expressed in the exquisitely finished and polished verse of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), who towered far above poets such as Prior, Gay, Parnell, not to speak of the swarm of Grub Street hacks that he ridiculed in the Dunciad. But in Pope's followers the style which a great artist could ennoble became vapid, commonplace and artificial. The drama declined like poetry. The so-called "Restoration" school died away. Addison's attempt to bring into England the severe and stately forms of the classic French drama led only to his artificial but much quoted Cato (1713), and perhaps to Johnson's stilted Irene (1749). The sentimental comedy which begins with Steele's Lying Lover appealed to the heart more than the head, while the broad farces of Fielding and Foote have no great claim to permanent fame. The last great dramas of the old style were Oliver Goldsmith's (1728-1774) refined and humorous She Stoops to Conquer, and the brilliant and epigrammatic Rivals (1775) and School for Scandal (1777), the fruitful and youthful work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Whig orator and partisan. But though few great plays were now produced, the drama more than held its own as a popular amusement, and the age of David Garrick, the famous player and manager (1716-1779) marked perhaps the most flourishing period of English acting.

Prose was better now than poetry. The end of the seventeenth century saw the establishment of a standard prose style, polished, easy, idiomatic, forcible, and exact. The English language became much what it still remains, though perhaps there was a leaning towards its Latin and Romance rather than its Teutonic elements. Even the mass of pamphlets and newspapers that reflected the political and theological controversies of the time showed the spread of a good style of writing. The periodical essay, which began with Steele's Tatler in 1709, became famous when Addison joined him, and reached its height when in 1711 the two

friends began the Spectator, which "brought philosophy out of closets, libraries and schools to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee-houses." The Guardian, the Freeholder, and in a later generation Johnson's Rambler and Idler, kept up the popularity of essay writing; but under Johnson's hands it lost the lightness of touch which was its greatest charm, and gave place to the magazine, the novel, and the political newspaper The terrible Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's (1667-1745), wrote the most nervous and robust of English prose, and the keenest and most biting satire on his fellow-men. His last great work, before his mind gave way in his lonely Irish exile, was his famous Gulliver's Travels (1726). The greatest men of letters joined in the eager political controversies of the time. Swift fiercely upheld the Tories and the Peace of Utrecht. Against him the polished Joseph Addison wrote his way with his Whig pamphlets to a secretaryship of state. Daniel Defoe, whose immortal Robinson Crusoe (1719) showed at its best his marvellous gift for "forging a story and imposing it on the world for truth," wrote on behalf of the Whigs and the Dissenters, and afterwards in his Review as the partisan of Harley. The wise and good George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland (1685-1753), carried on the work of John Locke, and answered the English Deists by denying the reality of matter in a style almost perfect for its clearness, strength, and balance.

In the new generation the Novel grew out of the form of the old romance turned to describe real life, and got its full growth in the broad and genial works of Henry Fielding, the sentimental and pathetic writings of Samuel Richardson, the rough but vigorous painting of manners of Tobias Smollett, the quaint humour of Lawrence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith's charming idyll, the Vicar of Wakefield. Rough, kind, and noble Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), poet, essayist, moralist, critic, and writer of an English Dictionary, was the centre of the literary life of more than one generation, so vividly pictured for us in James Boswell's matchless Life of Johnson, and meeting together on one evening a week at the Turk's Head in Soho, in the Literary Club, or Johnson's Club, as it was often called. History lost in accuracy and depth what it gained in art in the brilliant but superficial History of England (1754) of David Hume. It kept a colder but more serious form in the commonplace but much admired works of Principal. Robertson, and combined a scholarship that has never

been overthrown with the stateliest, most artificial of styles in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) of Edward Gibbon. But the eighteenth century cared little for history except as an elegant amusement, and preferred to build up its theories of life and nature without its aid. Hume's greatness as a philosopher is almost the measure of his failure as an historian. From his impulse has flowed nearly all later English thought on the nature of knowledge, and reality, and the character of moral action. Edmund Burke alone of that age knew how deep the roots of the present lie in the past.

A great change came over English thought and literature about the middle of the century. A new school of poetry arose with Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd (1725), and James Thomson's Seasons (1730). It received a great stimulus from the revived study of the romantic past which was brought about by the publication of the old ballads contained in Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), and by the renewed study of Chaucer, Shakspere, and the Elizabethan dramatists, which was first marked by the Shaksperian revival brought about on the stage by Garrick, and in literature by a whole series of commentaries and editions of the greatest of English writers. Even the turgid bombast which Macpherson published in 1762 as the poems of the old Gael Ossian had extraordinary influence from its depicting a free, rugged, unconventional society, and because with much that was forged it included fragments of Highland verse and tradition. The style and subject of poetry equally changed. The way of writing became more varied and natural, and bit by bit poets shook off the bondage of the heroic couplet. Writers again began to revel in country life and in beautiful scenery, and even in the fierce and wild mountains, hitherto objects of horror, which they described with sympathy and enthusiasm. Their view of man became enlarged, widened, and deepened, and they went through the artificialities and conventionalities of society down to the elemental passions of the human heart. The all-pervading influence of Rousseau, himself inspired by English models, was felt here as in politics, in religion, philanthropy, and manners. The new spirit took different shapes in the spontaneous and musical lyrics and living satires in the northern dialect of the Ayrshire farmer, Robert Burns (1759-1796), the delicate humour and pure natural feeling of William Cowper (1731-1800), the stern and realistic pictures of East Anglian village life of George Crabbe (1754-1832), and even the Elizabethan tone

and strange prophetic vision of the long-neglected poet and artist, William Blake (1757-1827). Towards the end of the century it comes to a head in the so-called Lake School, of which Wordsworth and Coleridge are the highest types. But before this all the old landmarks were changed by the outbreak of the French Revolution.

CHAPTER IV.

George III. The War against the French Revolution, 1789-1802.

1. In 1789 the French Revolution broke out, towards which things had been for a long time drifting. The French France had become the centre of the destructive Revolution, and restless eighteenth-century spirit. All the 1789-93. later attacks on the old order of things had come from French men of letters. They had vigorously denounced the many old-fashioned and, as they thought, now useless institutions that had come down from the Middle Ages. They had attacked all authority, all vested interests, everything that could not give some plain reason for existing. Voltaire and the Encyclopædists (Diderot, D'Alembert, and the other contributors to the famous French Encyclopédie) had taught the supremacy of reason, of humanity and common-sense. But Jean Jacques Rousseau, a Genevese settled in France, was the chief constructive teacher of the new order. He united much that was most true with all that was most false of the tendency of the times. His warm and credulous enthusiasm, his power of setting forth the current political and social ideals in a clear, brilliant, and fascinating style, gave him an influence over action such as no other man of letters has ever had. He declared that civilisation had obscured the original virtues of the natural man, taught a new sentimental Deism, and a new method of education. He preached with religious fervour a new political gospel of the rights of man and of liberty, equality, and fraternity. He maintained that all government was unlawful that did not depend on the sovereign people.

In some countries royal philosophers, like the Emperor Joseph II. and Catharine II. of Russia, had tried to reform their states after the French models. But in France itself

there was no real attempt at political or social reform. The great monarchy of Louis XIV. had decayed hopelessly under the weak and wicked Louis XV. (1715-1774), whose grandson and successor, Louis XVI., though not a bad man, was neither intelligent, hardworking, nor strong enough to set things right. The nobles lived in luxury at Court, and the people were ground down by heavy taxes and oppressive feudal dues, such as working on their lords' fields and mending the highways, or grinding their corn at their lords' mills. This was all the more felt, as the nobles had no political power, and did nothing in return for what they took from the people. The obscure but powerful intendants who ruled each province, and the greedy farmers of the taxes, were however equally incompetent and still more hated. The government was corrupt and constantly changing. In the Church, which had lost almost all hold over the nation, rich bishops took the pay, and poverty-stricken curates did the work. The privileged orders paid hardly any direct taxes. Neither they nor the people had any control of the govern

ment.

The American war showed that the French state was. bankrupt and had spread republican ideas. Things now went so badly that, after every other plan had been tried and failed, Louis XVI. was compelled to summon the Three Estates (which had never met since 1614) at Versailles. This was on 5th May 1789, and was the beginning of the Revolution. Power now fell into the hands of men disgusted with all that existed, with much honest zeal for reform,' yet with no practical knowledge how to govern a state, and looking for guidance to the fine-sounding but unreal notions of Rousseau. They at once swept away all the old institutions of France, and built up a new Constitution that made the executive government too weak to keep order, and allowed the Paris mob to become the real ruler. The Bastille, the state prison of Paris, was stormed and destroyed on 14th July 1789. The king and the Assembly were driven to Paris by the mob. The Court called for foreign aid, and the nobles fled to Germany. The moderate men were pushed aside in the stress of peril, and the most radical of the revolutionaries got everything into their hands. In 1792 the new Constitution was superseded by a revolutionary government controlled by the Jacobins, as the extremists were called, from the club which met in the old Jacobin convent of the Black Friars. The king and queen

were now tried and beheaded, Priests and aristocrats were