Chapter 5

The natural result, in fact, was the development of a new kind of literature, which was the most characteristic innovation of the period. The literary class of which I have hitherto spoken reflected the opinions of the upper social stratum. Beneath it was the class generally known as Grub Street. Grub Street had arisen at the time of the great civil struggle. War naturally generates journalism; it had struggled on through the Restoration and taken a fresh start at the Revolution and the final disappearance of the licensing system. The daily newspaper--meaning a small sheet written by a single author (editors as yet were not)--appeared at the opening of the eighteenth century. Now for Grub Street the wit of the higher class had nothing but dislike. The 'hackney author,' as Dunton called him, in his curious _Life and Errors_, was a mere huckster, who could scarcely be said as yet to belong to a profession. A Tutchin or Defoe might be pilloried, or flogged, or lose his ears, without causing a touch of compassion from men like Swift, who would have disdained to call themselves brother authors. Yet politicians were finding him useful. He was the victim of one party, and might be bribed or employed as a spy by the other. The history of Defoe and his painful struggles between his conscience and his need of living, sufficiently indicates the result; Charles Leslie, the gallant nonjuror, for example, or Abel Boyer, the industrious annalist, or the laborious but cantankerous Oldmixon, were keeping their heads above water by journalism, almost exclusively, of course, political. Defoe showed a genius for the art, and his mastery of vigorous vernacular was hardly rivalled until the time of Paine and Cobbett. At any rate, it was plain that a market was now arising for periodical literature which might give a scanty support to a class below the seat of patrons. It was at this point that the versatile, speculative, and impecunious Steele hit upon his famous discovery. The aim of the _Tatler_, started in April 1709, was marked out with great accuracy from the first. Its purpose is to contain discourses upon all manner of topics--_quicquid agunt homines_, as his first motto put it--which had been inadequately treated in the daily papers. It is supposed to be written in the various coffee-houses, and it is suited to all classes, even including women, whose taste, he observes, is to be caught by the title. The _Tatler_, as we know, led to the _Spectator_, and Addison's co-operation, cordially acknowledged by his friend, was a main cause of its unprecedented success. The _Spectator_ became the model for at least three generations of writers. The number of imitations is countless: Fielding, Johnson, Goldsmith, and many men of less fame tried to repeat the success; persons of quality, such as Chesterfield and Horace Walpole, condescended to write papers for the _World_--the 'Bow of Ulysses,' as it was called, in which they could test their strength. Even in the nineteenth century Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt carried on the form; as indeed, in a modified shape, many later essayists have aimed at a substantially similar achievement. To have contributed three or four articles was, as in the case of the excellent Henry Grove (a name, of course, familiar to all of you), to have graduated with honours in literature. Johnson exhorted the literary aspirant to give his days and nights to the study of Addison; and the _Spectator_ was the most indispensable set of volumes upon the shelves of every library where the young ladies described by Miss Burney and Miss Austen were permitted to indulge a growing taste for literature. I fear that young people of the present day discover, if they try the experiment, that their curiosity is easily satisfied. This singular success, however, shows that the new form satisfied a real need. Addison's genius must, of course, count for much in the immediate result; but it was plainly a case where genius takes up the function for which it is best suited, and in which it is most fully recognised. When we read him now we are struck by one fact. He claims in the name of the _Spectator_ to be a censor of manners and morals; and though he veils his pretensions under delicate irony, the claim is perfectly serious at bottom. He is really seeking to improve and educate his readers. He aims his gentle ridicule at social affectations and frivolities; and sometimes, though avoiding ponderous satire, at the grosser forms of vice. He is not afraid of laying down an æsthetic theory. In a once famous series of papers on the Imagination, he speaks with all the authority of a recognised critic in discussing the merits of Chevy Chase or of _Paradise Lost_; and in a series of Saturday papers he preaches lay-sermons--which were probably preferred by many readers to the official discourses of the following day. They contain those striking poems (too few) which led Thackeray to say that he could hardly fancy a 'human intellect thrilling with a purer love and admiration than Joseph Addison's.' Now, spite of the real charm which every lover of delicate humour and exquisite urbanity must find in Addison, I fancy that the _Spectator_ has come to mean for us chiefly Sir Roger de Coverley. It is curious, and perhaps painful, to note how very small a proportion of the whole is devoted to that most admirable achievement; and to reflect how little life there is in much that in kindness of feeling and grace of style is equally charming. One cause is obvious. When Addison talks of psychology or æsthetics or ethics (not to speak of his criticism of epic poetry or the drama), he must of course be obsolete in substance; but, moreover, he is obviously superficial. A man who would speak upon such topics now must be a grave philosopher, who has digested libraries of philosophy. Addison, of course, is the most modest of men; he has not the slightest suspicion that he is going beyond his tether; and that is just what makes his unconscious audacity remarkable. He fully shares the characteristic belief of the day, that the abstract problems are soluble by common sense, when polished by academic culture and aided by a fine taste. It is a case of _sancta simplicitas_; of the charming, because perfectly unconscious, self-sufficiency with which the Wit, rejecting pedantry as the source of all evil, thinks himself obviously entitled to lay down the law as theologian, politician, and philosopher. His audience are evidently ready to accept him as an authority, and are flattered by being treated as capable of reason, not offended by any assumption of their intellectual inferiority.

With whatever shortcomings, Addison, and in their degree Steele and his other followers, represent the stage at which the literary organ begins to be influenced by the demands of a new class of readers. Addison feels the dignity of his vocation and has a certain air of gentle condescension, especially when addressing ladies who cannot even translate his mottoes. He is a genuine prophet of what we now describe as Culture, and his exquisite urbanity and delicacy qualify him to be a worthy expositor of the doctrines, though his outlook is necessarily limited. He is therefore implicitly trying to solve the problem which could not be adequately dealt with on the stage; to set forth a view of the world and human nature which shall be thoroughly refined and noble, and yet imply a full appreciation of the humorous aspects of life. The inimitable Sir Roger embodies the true comic spirit; though Addison's own attempt at comedy was not successful.

One obvious characteristic of this generation is the didacticism which is apt to worry us. Poets, as well as philosophers and preachers, are terribly argumentative. Fielding's remark (through Parson Adams), that some things in Steele's comedies are almost as good as a sermon, applies to a much wider range of literature. One is tempted by way of explanation to ascribe this to a primitive and ultimate instinct of the race. Englishmen--including of course Scotsmen--have a passion for sermons, even when they are half ashamed of it; and the British Essay, which flourished so long, was in fact a lay sermon. We must briefly notice that the particular form of this didactic tendency is a natural expression of the contemporary rationalism. The metaphysician of the time identifies emotions and passions with intellectual affirmations, and all action is a product of logic. In any case we have to do with a period in which the old concrete imagery has lost its hold upon the more intelligent classes, and instead of an imaginative symbolism we have a system of abstract reasoning. Diagrams take the place of concrete pictures: and instead of a Milton justifying the ways of Providence by the revealed history, we have a Blackmore arguing with Lucretius, and are soon to have a Pope expounding a metaphysical system in the _Essay on Man_. Sir Roger represents a happy exception to this method and points to the new development. Addison is anticipating the method of later novelists, who incarnate their ideals in flesh and blood. This, and the minor character sketches which are introduced incidentally, imply a feeling after a less didactic method. As yet the sermon is in the foreground, and the characters are dismissed as soon as they have illustrated the preacher's doctrine. Such a method was congenial to the Wit. He was, or aspired to be, a keen man of the world; deeply interested in the characteristics of the new social order; in the eccentricities displayed at clubs, or on the Stock Exchange, or in the political struggles; he is putting in shape the practical philosophy implied in the conversations at clubs and coffee-houses; he delights in discussing such psychological problems as were suggested by the worldly wisdom of Rochefoucauld, and he appreciates clever character sketches such as those of La Bruyére. Both writers were favourites in England. But he has become heartily tired of the old romance, and has not yet discovered how to combine the interest of direct observation of man with a thoroughly concrete form of presentation.

The periodical essay represents the most successful innovation of the day; and, as I have suggested, because it represents the mode by which the most cultivated writer could be brought into effective relation with the genuine interests of the largest audience. Other writers used it less skilfully, or had other ways of delivering their message to mankind. Swift, for example, had already shown his peculiar vein. He gives a different, though equally characteristic, side of the intellectual attitude of the Wit. In the _Battle of the Books_ he had assumed the pedantry of the scholar; in the _Tale of a Tub_ with amazing audacity he fell foul of the pedantry of divines. His blows, as it seemed to the Archbishops, struck theology in general; he put that right by pouring out scorn upon Deists and all who were silly enough to believe that the vulgar could reason; and then in his first political writings began to expose the corrupt and selfish nature of politicians--though at present only of Whig politicians. Swift is one of the most impressive of all literary figures, and I will not even touch upon his personal peculiarities. I will only remark that in one respect he agrees with his friend Addison. He emphasises, of course, the aspect over which Addison passes lightly; he scorns fools too heartily to treat them tenderly and do justice to the pathetic side of even human folly. But he too believes in culture--though he may despair of its dissemination. He did his best, during his brief period of power, to direct patronage towards men of letters, even to Whigs; and tried, happily without success, to found an English Academy. His zeal was genuine, though it expressed itself by scorn for dunces and hostility to Grub Street. He illustrates one little peculiarity of the Wit. In the society of the clubs there was a natural tendency to form minor cliques of the truly initiated, who looked with sovereign contempt upon the hackney author. One little indication is the love of mystifications, or what were entitled 'bites.' All the Wits, as we know, combined to tease the unlucky fortune-teller, Partridge, and to maintain that their prediction of his death had been verified, though he absurdly pretended to be still alive. So Swift tells us in the journal to Stella how he had circulated a lie about a man who had been hanged coming to life again, and how footmen are sent out to inquire into its success. He made a hit by writing a sham account of Prior's mission to Paris supposed to come from a French valet. The inner circle chuckled over such performances, which would be impossible when their monopoly of information had been broken up. A similar satisfaction was given by the various burlesques and more or less ingenious fables which were to be fully appreciated by the inner circle; such as the tasteless narrative of Dennis's frenzy by which Pope professed to be punishing his victim for an attack upon Addison: or to such squibs as Arbuthnot's _John Bull_--a parable which gives the Tory view in a form fitted for the intelligent. The Wits, that is, form an inner circle, who like to speak with an affectation of obscurity even if the meaning be tolerably transparent, and show that they are behind the scenes by occasionally circulating bits of sham news. They like to form a kind of select upper stratum, which most fully believes in its own intellectual eminence, and shows a contempt for its inferiors by burlesque and rough sarcasm.

It is not difficult (especially when we know the result) to guess at the canons of taste which will pass muster in such regions. Enthusiastical politicians of recent days have been much given to denouncing modern clubs, where everybody is a cynic and unable to appreciate the great ideas which stir the masses. It may be so; my own acquaintance with club life, though not very extensive, does not convince me that every member of a London club is a Mephistopheles; but I will admit that a certain excess of hard worldly wisdom may be generated in such resorts; and we find many conspicuous traces of that tendency in the clubs of Queen Anne's reign. Few of them have Addison's gentleness or his perception of the finer side of human nature. It was by a rare combination of qualities that he was enabled to write like an accomplished man of the world, and yet to introduce the emotional element without any jarring discord. The literary reformers of a later day denounce the men of this period as 'artificial'! a phrase the antithesis of which is 'natural.' Without asking at present what is meant by the implied distinction--an inquiry which is beset by whole systems of equivocations--I may just observe that in this generation the appeal to Nature was as common and emphatic as in any later time. The leaders of thought believe in reason, and reason sets forth the Religion of Nature and assumes that the Law of Nature is the basis of political theory. The corresponding literary theory is that Art must be subordinate to Nature. The critics' rules, as Pope says in the poem which most fully expresses the general doctrine,

'Are Nature still, but Nature methodised; Nature, like Liberty, is but restrained By the same laws which first herself ordained.'

The Nature thus 'methodised' was the nature of the Wit himself; the set of instincts and prejudices which to him seemed to be so normal that they must be natural. Their standards of taste, if artificial to us, were spontaneous, not fictitious; the Wits were not wearing a mask, but were exhibiting their genuine selves with perfect simplicity. Now one characteristic of the Wit is always a fear of ridicule. Above all things he dreads making a fool of himself. The old lyric, for example, which came so spontaneously to the Elizabethan poet or dramatist, and of which echoes are still to be found in the Restoration, has decayed, or rather, has been transformed. When you have written a genuine bit of love-poetry, the last place, I take it, in which you think of seeking the applause of a congenial audience, would be the smoking-room of your club: but that is the nearest approach to the critical tribunal of Queen Anne's day. It is necessary to smuggle in poetry and passion in disguise, and conciliate possible laughter by stating plainly that you anticipate the ridicule yourself. In other words you write society verses like Prior, temper sentiment by wit, and if you do not express vehement passion, turn out elegant verses, salted by an irony which is a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously, Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then, as Johnson puts it, the 'effect of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' _The Rape of the Lock_ is the masterpiece, as often noticed, of an unconscious allegory. The sylph, who was introduced with such curious felicity, is to be punished if he fails to do his duty, by imprisonment in a lady's toilet apparatus.

'Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain, While clogged he beats his silver wings in vain.'

Delicate fancy and real poetical fancy may be turned to account; but under the mask of the mock-heroic. We can be poetical still, it seems to say, only we must never forget that to be poetical in deadly earnest is to run the risk of being absurd. Even a Wit is pacified when he is thus dexterously coaxed into poetry disguised as mere playful exaggeration, and feels quite safe in following the fortune of a game of cards in place of a sanguinary Homeric battle. Ariel is still alive, but he adopts the costume of the period to apologise for his eccentricities. Poetry thus understood may either give a charm to the trivial or fall into mere burlesque; and though Pope's achievement is an undeniable triumph, there are blots in an otherwise wonderful performance which show an uncomfortable concession to the coarser tastes of his audience.

I will not dwell further upon a tolerably obvious theme. I must pass to the more serious literature. The Wit had not the smallest notion that his attitude disqualified him for succession in the loftiest poetical endeavour. He thinks that his critical keenness will enable him to surpass the old models. He wishes, in the familiar phrase, to be 'correct'; to avoid the gross faults of taste which disfigured the old Gothic barbarism of his forefathers. That for him is the very meaning of reason and nature. He will write tragedies which must get rid of the brutalities, the extravagance, the audacious mixture of farce and tragedy which was still attractive to the vulgar. He has, indeed, a kind of lurking regard for the rough vigour of the Shakespearian epoch; his patriotic prejudices pluck at him at intervals, and suggest that Marlborough's countrymen ought not quite to accept the yoke of the French Academy. When Ambrose Phillips produced the _Distrest Mother_--adapted from Racine--all Addison's little society was enthusiastic. Steele stated in the Prologue that the play was meant to combine French correctness with British force, and praised it in the _Spectator_ because it was 'everywhere Nature.' The town, he pointed out, would be able to admire the passions 'within the rules of decency, honour, and good breeding.' The performance was soon followed by _Cato_, unquestionably, as Johnson still declares, 'the noblest production of Addison's genius.' It presents at any rate the closest conformity to the French model; and falls into comic results, as old Dennis pointed out, from the so-called Unity of Place, and consequent necessity of transacting all manner of affairs, love-making to Cato's daughter, and conspiring against Cato himself, in Cato's own hall. Such tragedy, however, refused to take root. Cato, as I think no one can deny, is a good specimen of Addison's style, but, except a few proverbial phrases, it is dead. The obvious cause, no doubt, is that the British public liked to see battle, murder, and sudden death, and, in spite of Addison's arguments, enjoyed a mixture of tragic and comic. Shakespeare, though not yet an idol, had still a hold upon the stage, and was beginning to be imitated by Rowe and to attract the attention of commentators. The sturdy Briton would not be seduced to the foreign model. The attempt to refine tragedy was as hopeless as the attempt to moralise comedy. This points to the process by which the Wit becomes 'artificial.' He has a profound conviction, surely not altogether wrong, that a tragedy ought to be a work of art. The artist must observe certain rules; though I need not ask whether he was right in thinking that these rules were represented by the accepted interpreters of the teaching of Nature. What he did not perceive was that another essential condition was absent; namely, that the tragic mood should correspond to his own 'nature.' The tragic art can, like other arts, only flourish when it embodies spontaneously the emotions and convictions of the spectators; when the dramatist is satisfying a genuine demand, and is himself ready to see in human life the conflict of great passions and the scene of impressive catastrophes. Then the theatre becomes naturally the mirror upon which the imagery can be projected. But the society to which Addison and his fellows belonged was a society of good, commonplace, sensible people, who were fighting each other by pamphlets instead of by swords; who played a game in which they staked not life and death but a comfortable competency; who did not even cut off the head of a fallen minister, who no longer believed in great statesmen of heroic proportions rising above the vulgar herd; and who had a very hearty contempt for romantic extravagance. A society in which common sense is regarded as the cardinal intellectual virtue does not naturally suggest the great tragic themes. Cato is obviously contrived, not inspired; and the dramatist is thinking of obeying the rules of good taste, instead of having them already incorporated in his thought. This comes out in one chief monument in the literary movement, I mean Pope's _Homer_. Pope, as we know, made himself independent by that performance. The method of publication is significant. He had no interest in the general sale, which was large enough to make his publisher's fortune. The publisher meanwhile supplied him gratuitously with the copies for which the subscribers paid him six guineas apiece. That means that he received a kind of commission from the upper class to execute the translation. The list of his subscribers seems to be almost a directory to the upper circle of the day; every person of quality has felt himself bound to promote so laudable an undertaking; the patron had been superseded by a kind of joint-stock body of collective patronage. The Duke of Buckingham, one of its accepted mouthpieces, had said in verse in his _Essay on Poetry_ that if you once read Homer, everything else will be 'mean and poor.'

Verse will seem prose; yet often in him look And you will hardly need another book.'