LECTURE VIII.

Relations of Periods.-Contrast between the First and Second Phase of the Critical Period, (a) In Prose Composition, (¿) In Style.-Johnson's Style.-Pre-eminence of Prose.-Theology.— Metaphysics.- Political Science.— History.— Oratory.— Rhetoric. The Novel.-Authority of Johnson.-Grounds of.—Character of his Criticism.

We are now to speak of the second phase of the artistic period, falling to the middle of the eighteenth century. Again we see that periods, as indicating the prevalence of particular influences, have no definite bounds. There is very little in intellectual forces, either in their origin or their end, which is instantaneous or abrupt. They overlie each other, interpenetrate each other, and gradually grow out of each other, under the slow victory of new tendencies, under the slow expenditure of old ones. Associated conditions secure a ganglionic centre, and increase and diminish in power as we approach or recede from it; while the forces that are to rule a subsequent age are already springing up among them. The art which in English literature had culminated in Pope and Addison did not pass away quickly. It was a vigorous and deep-rooted tendency, and did not easily yield possession of the national soil. It assumed a second form before it began to give ground to the forces that supplanted it. There was far too much strength,

too much freshness and individuality of thought, too little extravagance and affectation of method, too much common sense and English sympathy, in the writers of the reign of Queen Anne to allow them to be easily pushed aside. For one full generation after them, the literary momentum of their works was unabated; and only slowly, as the last century was drawing to a close, and the present century was opening, did vigorous reactionary tendencies disclose themselves.

Yet the second phase of this period, that which is marked by the autocracy of Johnson, differed in some decided features from the first, under the divided rule of Pope and Addison. In the early portion, poetry and prose stood in fair equipoise. The influence of Pope was not secondary to that of Addison. If he is not to be ranked with the great creative minds of our literature, yet this was not the feeling of his cotemporaries concerning him. There were no honors which they of his own time, or the times immediately subsequent, were disposed to withhold from him. That he has fallen to a lower position is due to the verdict of later judges. The artist who rules by art, who, in the incipient conflict that is always springing up between creation and art, sides with the latter, almost always leads his generation. Art, passing from its unconscious and creative to its conscious and preceptive stage, in its clear, critical, formal procedure, flatters our vanity of knowledge, and meets with easy and quiet admiration. It is only when it strikes upward or outward in growth farther than we can follow it,

that it is compelled to wait for a first, second, or third generation to reach its level, and enter into its spirit. Art that is merely garnering the past is popular; it is only when it attempts to break new ground for the future, that it encounters the barriers of prejudice.

In the later portion of this period, no one in poetry stood up in the place of Pope. No ône possessed equal weight with him, or could for a moment challenge his rank. Poetry that many would now prefer to that of Pope belonged to the time of Johnson, yet there was no poet who was so productive, who held the same available power, or could command any considerable part of the influence which fell so easily to the corypheus of art. Quantity has some weight even in poetry, and the prodigal abundance of a fruitful mind gives to it a position it cannot claim by any single production, though that production be its very best. The second moiety of the artistic period differed then from the first, in the preeminence of one mind, and differed from it and from every previous period in our literature, in the pre-eminence of prose over poetry. As the poems of Johnson are related to his other works, so was the poetry of his time to its prose productions. There is an unmistakable predominence of this secondary branch of literature, which indicates the period to be one peculiarly degenerate in art. Poetry had become sparse, sporadic, and was waiting for a new development; prose was prolific, dominant, critical, taking vigorous possession of new fields.

The reason for this, or rather one reason for it, it is not difficult to render. Criticism always makes for the relative enlargement of prose in several ways. Art, in its critical, speculative bearing, is a triumph of the intellect over the emotions, and is thus an extension of the sphere of thought. The didactic spirit is uppermost, and finds in prose its ready and fitting instrument. The dominant tendency is one which stands in direct, intrinsic affinity with this simple, and, for mere truth, primary, form of composition, and cannot fail, therefore, often to prefer it. The impulse which at another time would expend itself in a poem, will now be taken up by a critique; and a dissertation on method will be substituted for performance. Further, art being everywhere active as a formative, external force, will lay hold of prose, reshape it, give it new excellencies, and be proportionately enamored of it. There was little for the critical feeling merely to prefer in the poems of Pope above the papers of Addison. In some respects, the latter held the advantage as against the former. Their beauties were fresh, spontaneous and natural. Poetry was passing its zenith, prose was mounting to it. This was for the first time coming into the power that belonged to it, while that was only gathering a second and inferior harvest. The intrinsic force of the two, their spontaniety, was naturally proportioned to this fact. This fact, then, so peculiar to the period, of the ascendency of prose, we hold to be a direct issue of the cold and critical temper which ruled in literature, calling the thoughts into unwonted activity, and

proportionately restricting the spontaneous expression of the emotions. Those wrought best in poetry who, like Goldsmith, were inevitably emotional, and could not be driven from the fastnesses of a tender, passionate nature, by the fashion of the time, or the ridicule of men.

Another difference is found between the earlier portions of the century and its later years in the style of Johnson as contrasted with that of Addison. Johnson, in accepted tendencies, in the grounds of his critical judgments, was in the line of direct descent from Addison; though, by the formation of his own mind, he was very diverse from him. Following in the same form of composition, he supplemented the Tatler and Spectator with the Idler and Rambler, and these papers closed this chapter of prose art in our literature. In their moral tone, social purpose, and critical spirit, the unequal portions contributed by Addison and Johnson to the splendid completion of Steele's fortunate conception, were identical; in aptness of execution and ease in style they were very different. These two men, working with one spirit and under similar circumstances, admirably illustrate the importance of the factor of original endowment. The manner of Addison was impossible to Johnson; his rugged and ponderous nature utterly forbade it. Johnson puts himself in inevitable and unfavorable contrast with Addison by a style inflexible, weighty, not to say heavy, and full of a controlling mental habit. He thus brought a powerful, personal element to the por