Chapter 11

Another literary movement is beginning which is to lead to the sense of this deficiency. The nobleman, growing rich and less absorbed in the political world, has time and leisure to cultivate his tastes, becomes, as I have said, a dilettante, and sends his son to make the grand tour as a regular part of his education. Some demon whispers to him, as Pope puts it, Visto, have a taste! He buys books and pictures, takes to architecture and landscape-gardening, and becomes a 'collector.' The instinct of 'collecting' is, I suppose, natural, and its development is connected with some curious results. One of the favourite objects of ridicule of the past essayists was the virtuoso. There was something to them inexpressibly absurd in a passion for buying odds and ends. Pope, Arbuthnot, and Gay made a special butt of Dr. Woodward, possessor of a famous ancient shield and other antiquities. Equally absurd, they thought, was his passion for fossils. He made one of the first collections of such objects, saw that they really had a scientific interest, and founded at Cambridge the first professorship of geology. Another remarkable collector was Sir Hans Sloane, who had brought home a great number of plants from Jamaica and founded the botanic garden at Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000 gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became the foundation of the British Museum; when (1753) Horace Walpole remarks that they might be worth £80,000 for anybody who loved hippopotamuses, sharks with one ear, and spiders as big as geese. Scientific research, that is, revealed itself to contemporaries as a childish and absurd monomania, unworthy of a man of sense. John Hunter had not yet begun to form the unequalled museum of physiology, and even the scientific collectors could have but a dim perception of the importance of a minute observation of natural phenomena. The contempt for such collections naturally accompanied a contempt for the antiquary, another variety of the same species. The study of old documents and ancient buildings seemed to be a simple eccentricity. Thomas Hearne, the Oxford antiquary, was a typical case. He devoted himself to the study of old records and published a series of English Chronicles which were of essential service to English historians. To his contemporaries this study seemed to be as worthless as Woodward's study of fossils. Like other monomaniacs he became crusty and sour for want of sympathy. His like-minded contemporary, Carte, ruined the prospects of his history by letting out his belief in the royal power of curing by touch. Antiquarianism, though providing invaluable material for history, seemed to be a silly crotchet, and to imply a hatred to sound Whiggism and modern enlightenment, so long as the Wit and the intelligent person of quality looked upon the past simply as the period of Gothic barbarism. But an approximation is beginning to take place. The relation is indicated by the case of Horace Walpole, a man whose great abilities have been concealed by his obvious affectations. Two of Walpole's schoolfellows at Eton were Gray and William Cole. Cole, the Cambridge antiquary, who tried to do for his own university what Woodward had done for Oxford, was all but a Catholic, and in political sympathies agreed with Hearne and Carte. Walpole was a thorough Whig and a freethinker, so long, at least, as freethinking did not threaten danger to comfortable sinecures bestowed upon the sons of Whig ministers. But Cole became Walpole's antiquarian oracle. When Walpole came back from the grand tour, with nothing particular to do except spend his income, he found one amusement in dabbling in antiquarian research. He discovered, among other things, that even a Gothic cathedral could be picturesque, and in 1750 set about building a 'little Gothic Castle' at Strawberry Hill. The Gothic was of course the most superficial imitation; but it became the first of a long line of similar imitations growing gradually more elaborate with results of which we all have our own opinion. To Walpole himself Strawberry Hill was a mere plaything, and he would not have wished to be taken too seriously; as his romance of the _Castle of Otranto_ was a literary squib at which he laughed himself, though it became the forefather of a great literary school. The process may be regarded as logical: the previous generation, rejoicing in its own enlightenment, began to recognise the difference between present and past more clearly than its ancestors had done; but generally inferred that the men of old had been barbarians. The Tory and Jacobite who clings to the past praises its remains with blind affection, and can see nothing in the present but corruption and destruction of the foundations of society. The indifferent dilettante, caring little for any principles and mainly desirous of amusement, discovers a certain charm in the old institutions while he professes to despise them in theory. That means one of the elements of the complex sentiment which we describe as romanticism. The past is obsolete, but it is pretty enough to be used in making new playthings. The reconciliation will be reached when the growth of historical inquiry leads men to feel that past and present are parts of a continuous series, and to look upon their ancestors neither as simply ridiculous nor as objects of blind admiration. The historical sense was, in fact, growing: and Walpole's other friend, Gray, may represent the literary version. The Queen Anne school, though it despised the older literature, had still a certain sneaking regard for it. Addison, for example, pays some grudging compliments to Chaucer and Spenser, though he is careful to point out the barbarism of their taste. Pope, like all poets, had loved Spenser in his boyhood and was well read in English poetry. It was mighty simple of Rowe, he said, to try to write in the style of Shakespeare, that is, in the style of a bad age. Yet he became one of the earliest, and far from one of the worst, editors of Shakespeare; and the growth of literary interest in Shakespeare is one of the characteristic symptoms of the period. Pope had contemplated a history of English poetry which was taken up by Gray and finally executed by Warton. The development of an interest in literary history naturally led to new departures. The poets of the period, Gray and Collins and the Wartons, are no longer members of the little circle with strict codes of taste. They are scholars and students not shut up within the metropolitan area. There has been a controversy as to whether Gray's unproductiveness is partly to be ascribed to his confinement to a narrow and, it seems, to a specially stupid academical circle at Cambridge. Anyway, living apart from the world of politicians and fine gentlemen, he had the opportunity to become the most learned of English poets and to be at home in a wide range of literature representing a great variety of models. As the antiquary begins to rise to the historian, the poetical merits recognised in the less regular canons become manifest. Thomson, trying to write a half-serious imitation of Spenser, made his greatest success by a kind of accident in the _Castle of Indolence_ (1748); Thomas Warton's Observation on the _Faery Queene_ in 1757 was an illustration of the influence of historical criticism. I need not say how Collins was interested by Highland superstition and Gray impressed by Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, and how in other directions the labours of the antiquarian were beginning to provide materials for the poetical imagination. Gray and Collins still held to the main Pope principles. They try to be clear and simple and polished, and their trick of personifying abstract qualities indicates the philosophical doctrine which was still acceptable. The special principle, however, which they were beginning to recognise is that indicated by Joseph Warton's declaration in his _Essay on Pope_ (1757). 'The fashion of moralising in verse,' he said, had been pushed too far, and he proceeded to startle the orthodox by placing Spenser above Pope. The heresy gave so much offence, it is said, that he did not venture to bring out his second volume for twenty-five years. The point made by Warton marks, in fact, the critical change. The weak side of the Pope school had been the subordination of the imagination to the logical theory. Poetry tends to become rhymed prose because the poet like the preacher has to expound doctrines and to prove by argument. He despises the old mythology and the romantic symbolism because the theory was obviously absurd to a man of the world, and to common sense. He believes that Homer was deliberately conveying an allegory: and an allegory, whether of Homer or of Spenser, is a roundabout and foolish way of expressing the truth. A philosopher--and a poem is versified philosophy--should express himself as simply and directly as possible. But, as soon as you begin to appreciate the charm of ancient poetry, to be impressed by Scandinavian Sagas or Highland superstition or Welsh bards, or allow yourself to enjoy Spenser's idealised knights and ladies in spite of their total want of common sense, or to appreciate _Paradise Lost_ although you no longer accept Milton's scheme of theology, it becomes plain that the specially poetic charm must consist in something else; that it can appeal to the emotions and the imagination, though the doctrine which it embodies is as far as possible from convincing your reason. The discovery has a bearing upon what is called the love of Nature. Even Thomson and his followers still take the didactic view of Nature. They are half ashamed of their interest in mere dead objects, but can treat skies and mountains as a text for discourses upon Natural Theology. But Collins and Gray and Warton are beginning to perceive that the pleasure which we receive from a beautiful prospect, whether of a mountain or of an old abbey, is something which justifies itself and may be expressed in poetry without tagging a special moral to its tail. Yet the sturdy common sense represented by Fielding and Johnson is slow to accept this view, and the romantic view of things has still for him a touch of sentimentalism and affectation, and indicates the dilettante rather than the serious thinker, and Pope still represents the orthodox creed though symptoms of revolt are slowly showing themselves.

V

(1763-1788)

I now come to the generation which preceded the outbreak of the French Revolution. Social and political movements are beginning to show themselves in something of their modern form, and suggest most interesting problems for the speculative historian. At the same time, if we confine ourselves to the purely literary region, it is on the whole a period of stagnation. Johnson is the acknowledged dictator, and Johnson, the 'last of the Tories,' upholds the artistic canons of Dryden and Pope, though no successor arises to produce new works at all comparable with theirs. The school, still ostensibly dominant, has lost its power of stimulating genius; and as yet no new school has arisen to take its place. Wordsworth and Coleridge and Scott were still at college, and Byron in the nursery, at the end of the period. There is a kind of literary interregnum, though not a corresponding stagnation of speculative and political energy.

Looking, in the first place, at the active world, the great fact of the time is the series of changes to which we give the name of the industrial revolution. The growth of commercial and manufacturing enterprise which had been going on quietly and continuously had been suddenly accelerated. Glasgow and Liverpool and Manchester and Birmingham were becoming great towns, and the factory system was being developed, profoundly modifying the old relation of the industrial classes. England was beginning to aim at commercial supremacy, and politics were to be more than ever dominated by the interests of the 'moneyed man,' or, as we now call them, 'capitalists.' Essentially connected with these changes is another characteristic development. Social problems were arising. The growth of the manufactory system and the accumulation of masses of town population, for example, forced attention to the problem of pauperism, and many attempts of various kinds were being made to deal with it. The same circumstances were beginning to rouse an interest in education; it had suddenly struck people that on Sundays, at least, children might be taught their letters so far as to enable them to spell out their Bible. The inadequacy of the police and prison systems to meet the new requirements roused the zeal of many, and led to some reforms. As the British Empire extended we began to become sensible of certain correlative duties; the impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at the end of the period were to prelude an agitation in some ways unprecedented.

In the political world again we have the first appearance of a distinctly democratic movement. The struggle over Wilkes during the earlier years began a contest which was to last through generations. The American War of Independence emphasised party issues, and in some sense heralded the French Revolution. I only note one point. The British 'Whig' of those days represented two impulses which gradually diverged. There was the home-bred Whiggism of Wilkes and Horne Tooke--the Whiggism of which the stronghold was in the city of London, with such heroes as Lord Mayor Beckford, whose statue in the Guildhall displays him hurling defiance at poor George III. This party embodies the dissatisfaction of the man of business with the old system which cramped his energies. In the name of liberty he demands 'self-government'; not greater vigour in the Executive but less interference and a freer hand for the capitalist. He believes in individual enterprise. He accepts the good old English principle that the man who pays taxes should have a voice in spending them; but he appeals not to an abstract political principle but to tradition. The reformer, as so often happens, calls himself a restorer; his political bible begins with the great charter and comes down to the settlement of 1688. Meanwhile the true revolutionary movement--represented by Paine and Godwin, appeals to the doctrines of natural equality and the rights of man. It is unequivocally democratic, and implies a growing cleavage between the working man and the capitalists. It repudiates all tradition, and aspires to recast the whole social order. Instead of proposing simply to diminish the influence of government, it really tends to centralisation and the transference of power to the lower classes. This genuine revolutionary principle did not become conspicuous in England until it was introduced by the contagion from France, and even then it remained an exotic. For the present the Whig included all who opposed the Toryism of George III. The difference between the Whig and the Radical was still latent, though to be manifested in the near future. When the 'new Whigs,' as Burke called them, Fox and Sheridan, welcomed the French Revolution in 1789, they saw in it a constitutional movement of the English type and not a thorough-going democratic movement which would level all classes, and transfer the political supremacy to a different social stratum.

This implies a dominant characteristic of the English political movement. It was led, to use a later phrase, by Whigs not Radicals; by men who fully accepted the British constitution, and proposed to remove abuses, not to recast the whole system. The Whig wished to carry out more thoroughly the platform accepted in 1688, to replace decaying by sound timbers; but not to reconstruct from the base or to override tradition by abstract and obsolete theories. His desire for change was limited by a strong though implicit conservatism. This characteristic is reflected in the sphere of speculative activity. Philosophy was represented by the Scottish school whose watchword was common sense. Reid opposed the scepticism of Hume which would lead, as he held, to knocking his head against a post--a course clearly condemned by common sense; but instead of soaring into transcendental and ontological regions, he stuck to 'Baconian induction' and a psychology founded upon experience. Hume himself, as I have said, had written for the speculative few not for the vulgar; and he had now turned from the chase of metaphysical refinements to historical inquiry. Interest in history had become characteristic of the time. The growth of a stable, complex, and continuous social order implies the formation of a corporate memory. Masses of records had already been accumulated by antiquaries who had constructed rather annals than history, in which the series of events was given without much effort to arrange them in literary form or trace the causal connection. In France, however, Montesquieu had definitely established the importance of applying the historical method to political problems; and Voltaire had published some of his brilliant surveys which attempt to deal with the social characteristics as well as the mere records of battles and conquests. Hume's _History_, admirably written, gave Englishmen the first opportunity of enjoying a lucid survey of the conspicuous facts previously embedded in ponderous antiquarian phrases. Hume was one of the triumvirate who produced the recognised masterpieces of contemporary literature. Robertson's theories are, I take it, superseded: but his books, especially the _Charles V._, not only gave broad surveys but suggested generalisations as to the development of institutions, which, like most generalisations, were mainly wrong, but stimulated further inquiry. Gibbon, the third of the triumvirate, uniting the power of presenting great panoramas of history with thorough scholarship and laborious research, produced the great work which has not been, if it ever can be, superseded. A growing interest in history thus led to some of the chief writings of the time, as we can see that it was the natural outgrowth of the intellectual position. The rapid widening of the historical horizon made even a bare survey useful, and led to some recognition of the importance of guiding and correcting political and social theory by careful investigation of past experience. The historian began to feel an ambition to deal in philosophical theories. He was, moreover, touched by the great scientific movement. A complete survey of the intellectual history of the time would of course have to deal with the great men who were laying the foundations of the modern physical sciences; such as Black, and Priestley, and Cavendish, and Hunter. It would indeed, have to point out how small was the total amount of such knowledge in comparison with the vast superstructure which has been erected in the last century. The foundation of the Royal Institution at the end of the eighteenth century marks, perhaps, the point at which the importance of physical science began to impress the popular imagination. But great thinkers had long recognised the necessity of applying scientific method in the sphere of social and political investigation. Two men especially illustrate the tendency and the particular turn which it took in England. Adam Smith's great book in 1776 applied scientific method to political economy. Smith is distinguished from his French predecessors by the historical element of his work; by his careful study, that is, of economic history, and his consequent presentation of his theory not as a body of absolute and quasi-mathematical truth, but as resting upon the experience and applicable to the concrete facts of his time. His limitation is equally characteristic. He investigated the play of the industrial mechanism with too little reference to the thorough interdependence of economic and other social conditions. Showing how that mechanism adapts itself to supply and demand, he comes to hold that the one thing necessary is to leave free play to competition, and that the one essential force is the individual's desire for his own material interests. He became, therefore, the prophet of letting things alone. That doctrine--whatever its merits or defects--implies acquiescence in the existing order, and is radically opposed to a demand for a reconstruction of society. This is most clearly illustrated by the other thinker Jeremy Bentham. Bentham, unlike Smith, shared the contempt for history of the absolute theorists, and was laying down a theory conceived in the spirit of absolutism which became the creed of the uncompromising political radicals of the next generation. But it is characteristic that Bentham was not, during the eighteenth century, a Radical at all. He altogether repudiated and vigorously denounced the 'Rights of Men' doctrines of Rousseau and his followers, and regarded the Declaration of Independence in which they were embodied as a mere hotchpotch of absurdity. He is determined to be thoroughly empirical--to take men as he found them. But his utilitarianism supposed that men's views of happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached. Then, he thought, rulers and subjects would be equally ready to apply his principles. He fully accepted Adam Smith's theory of non-interference in economical matters; and his view of philosophy in the lump was that there was no such thing, only a heap of obsolete fallacies and superstitions which would be easily dispersed by the application of a little downright common sense. Bentham's utilitarianism, again, is congenial to the whole intellectual movement. His ethical theory was substantially identical with that of Paley--the most conspicuous writer upon theology of the generation,--and Paley is as thoroughly empirical in his theology as in his ethics, and makes the truth of religion essentially a question of historical and scientific evidence.