Part 302

"That which was once called the Augustan age of English literature was specially marked by the growing development of a distinct literary class. It was a period of transition from the early system of the patronage of authors to the later system of their professional independence. Patronage was being changed into influence. The system of subscription, by which Pope made his fortune, was a kind of joint-stock patronage. The noble did not support the poet, but induced his friends to subscribe. The noble, moreover, made another discovery. He found that he could dispense a cheaper and more effective patronage than of old by patronising at the public expense. During the reign of Queen Anne, the author of a successful poem or an effective pamphlet might look forward to a comfortable place. The author had not to wear the livery, but to become the political follower, of the great man. Gradually a separation took place. The minister found it better to have a regular corps of politicians and scribblers in his pay than occasionally to recruit his ranks by enlisting men of literary taste. And, on the other hand, authors, by slow degrees, struggled into a more independent position as their public increased. In the earlier part of the century, however, we find a class of fairly cultivated people, sufficiently numerous to form a literary audience, and yet not so numerous as to split into entirely distinct fractions. The old religious and political warfare has softened; the statesman loses his place, but not his head; and though there is plenty of bitterness, there is little violence. We have thus a brilliant society of statesmen, authors, clergymen, and lawyers, forming social clubs, meeting at coffee-houses, talking scandal and politics, and intensely interested in the new social phenomena which emerge as the old order decays; more excitable, perhaps, than their fathers, but less desperately in earnest, and waging a constant pamphleteering warfare upon politics, literature, and theology, which is yet consistent with a certain degree of friendly intercourse. The essayist, the critic, and the novelist appear for the first time in their modern shape; and the journalist is slowly gaining some authority as the wielder of a political force. The whole character of contemporary literature, in short, is moulded by the social conditions of the class for which and by which it was written, still more distinctly than by the ideas current in contemporary speculation. … Pope is the typical representative of the poetical spirit of the day. He may or may not be regarded as the intellectual superior of Swift or Addison; and the most widely differing opinions may be formed of the intrinsic merits of his poetry. The mere fact, however, that his poetical dynasty was supreme to the end of the century proved that, in some sense, he is a most characteristic product. Nor is it hard to see the main sources of his power. Pope had at least two great poetical qualities. He was amongst the most keenly sensitive of men, and he had an almost unique felicity of expression, which has enabled him to coin more proverbs than any writer since Shakespeare. Sensitive, it may be said, is a polite word for morbid, and his felicity of phrase was more adapted to coin epigrams than poetry. The controversy is here irrelevant. Pope, whether, as I should say, a true poet, or, as some have said, only the most sparkling of rhymesters, reflects the thoughts of his day with a curious completeness. … There is, however, another wide province of literature in which writers of the eighteenth century did work original in character and of permanent value. If the seventeenth century is the great age of dramatists and theologians, the eighteenth century was the age in which the critic, the essayist, the satirist, the novelist, and the moralist first appeared, or reached the highest mark. Criticism, though still in its infancy, first became an independent art with Addison. Addison and his various colleagues set the first example of that kind of social essay which is still popular. Satire had been practised in the preceding century, and in the hands of Dryden had become a formidable political weapon; but the social satire of which Pope was, and remains, the chief master, began with the century, and may be said to have expired with it, in spite of the efforts of Byron and Gifford. De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett developed the modern novel out of very crude rudiments; and two of the greatest men of the century, Swift and Johnson, may be best described as practical moralists in a vein peculiar to the time. … The English novel, as the word is now understood, begins with De Foe. Though, like all other products of mind or body, it was developed out of previously existing material, and is related to the great family of stories with which men have amused themselves in all ages, it is, perhaps, as nearly an original creation as anything can be. The legends of saints which amused the middle ages, or the chivalrous romances which were popular throughout the seventeenth century, had become too unreal to amuse living human beings. De Foe made the discovery that a history might be equally interesting if the recorded events had never happened."

_L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, chapter 12, sections 23-56 (volume 2)._

"This so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be regarded with that complacency which led the most flourishing part of it to adopt the epithet 'Augustan.' It will scarcely be denied by its greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five great ages of literature. Deficient in the highest intellectual beauty, in the qualities which awaken the fullest critical enthusiasm, the eighteenth century will be enjoyed more thoroughly by those who make it their special study than by those who skim the entire surface of literature. It has, although on the grand scale condemned as second-rate, a remarkable fulness and sustained richness which endear it to specialists. If it be compared, for instance, with the real Augustan age in Rome, or with the Spanish period of literary supremacy, it may claim to hold its own against these rivals in spite of their superior rank, because of its more copious interest. If it has neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it has a great extent and variety of writers just below these in merit, and far more numerous than what Rome or Spain can show during those blossoming periods. It is, moreover, fertile at far more points than either of these schools. This sustained and variegated success, at a comparatively low level of effort, strikes one as characteristic of an age more remarkable for persistent vitality than for rapid and brilliant growth. The Elizabethan vivida vis is absent, the Georgian glow has not yet dawned, but there is a suffused prosaic light of intelligence, of cultivated form, over the whole picture, and during the first half of the period, at least, this is bright enough to be very attractive. Perhaps, in closing, the distinguishing mark of eighteenth-century literature may be indicated as its mastery of prose as a vehicle for general thought."

_E. Gosse, The Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature (New Princeton Rev., July, 1888, page 21)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1703. The Methuen Treaty with Portugal.

See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1703; and SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704.

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England: A. D. 1703. The Aylesbury election case.

"Ashby, a burgess of Aylesbury, sued the returning officer for maliciously refusing his vote. Three judges of the King's Bench decided, against the opinion of Chief Justice Holt, that the verdict which a jury had given in favor of Ashby must be set aside, as the action was not maintainable. The plaintiff went to the House of Lords upon a writ of error, and there the judgment was reversed by a large majority of Peers. The Lower House maintained that 'the qualification of an elector is not cognizable elsewhere than before the Commons of England'; that Ashby was guilty of a breach of privilege; and that all persons who should in future commence such an action, and all attorneys and counsel conducting the same, are also guilty of a high breach of privilege. The Lords, led by Somers, then came to counter-resolutions. … The prorogation of Parliament put an end to the quarrel in that Session; but in the next it was renewed with increased violence. The judgment against the Returning Officer was followed up by Ashby levying his damages. Other Aylesbury men brought new actions. The Commons imprisoned the Aylesbury electors. The Lords took strong measures that affected, or appeared to affect, the privileges of the Commons. The Queen finally stopped the contest by a prorogation; and the quarrel expired when the Parliament expired under the Triennial Act. Lord Somers 'established the doctrine which has been acted on ever since, that an action lies against a Returning Officer for maliciously refusing the vote of an elector.'"

_C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 5, chapter 17._

ALSO IN: _Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors: Somers, chapter. 110 (volume 4)._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1704-1707. Marlborough's campaigns in the War of the Spanish Succession. Campaigns in Spain.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1704; SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704, to 1707; NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1705, and 1706-1707.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1707. The Union with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1707-1708. Hostility to the Union in Scotland. Spread of Jacobitism.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707-1708.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1708-1709. The War of the Spanish Succession: Oudenarde and Malplaquet.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709; and SPAIN: A. D. 1707-1710.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1709. The Barrier Treaty with Holland.

"The influence of the Whig party in the affairs of government in England, always irksome to the Queen, had now began visibly to decline; and the partiality she was suspected of entertaining for her brother, with her known dislike of the house of Hanover, inspired them with alarm, lest the Tories might seek still further to propitiate her favour, by altering, in his favour, the line of succession, as at present established. They had, accordingly, made it one of the preliminaries of the proposed treaty of peace, that the Protestant succession, in England, should be secured by a general guarantee, and now sought to repair, as far as possible, the failure caused by the unsuccessful termination of the conferences, by entering into a treaty to that effect with the States. The Marquis Townshend, accordingly, repaired for this purpose to the Hague, when the States consented to enter into an engagement to maintain the present succession to the crown, with their whole force, and to make the recognition of that succession, and the expulsion of the Pretender from France, an indispensable preliminary to any peace with that kingdom. In return for this important guarantee, England was to secure to the States a barrier, formed of the towns of Nieuport, Furnes and the fort of Knokke, Menin, Lille, Ryssel, Tournay, Conde, and Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Charleroi, Namur, Lier, Halle, and some forts, besides the citadels of Ghent and Dendermonde. It was afterwards asserted, in excuse for the dereliction from that treaty on the part of England, that Townshend had gone beyond his instructions; but it is quite certain that it was ratified without hesitation by the queen, whatever may have been her secret feelings regarding it."

_C. M. Davies, History of Holland, part 3, chapter 11 (volume 3 ). _ ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712. Opposition to the war. Trial of Sacheverell. Fall of the Whigs and Marlborough.

"A 'deluge of blood' such as that of Malplaquet increased the growing weariness of the war, and the rejection of the French offers was unjustly attributed to a desire on the part of Marlborough of lengthening out a contest which brought him profit and power. The expulsion of Harley and St. John [Bolingbroke] from the Ministry had given the Tories leaders of a more vigorous stamp, and St. John brought into play a new engine of political attack whose powers soon made themselves felt. In the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed in its train, the humor of Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, and St. John's own brilliant sophistry spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its general. … A sudden storm of popular passion showed the way in which public opinion responded to these efforts. A High-Church divine, Dr. Sacheverell, maintained the doctrine of non-resistance [the doctrine, that is, of passive obedience and non-resistance to government, implying a condemnation of the Revolution of 1688 and of the Revolution settlement], in a sermon at St. Paul's, with a boldness which deserved prosecution; but in spite of the warning of Marlborough and of Somers the Whig Ministers resolved on his impeachment. His trial in 1710 at once widened into a great party struggle, and the popular enthusiasm in Sacheverell's favor showed the gathering hatred of the Whigs and the war. … A small majority of the peers found him guilty, but the light sentence they inflicted was in effect an acquittal, and bonfires and illuminations over the whole country welcomed it as a Tory triumph. The turn of popular feeling freed Anne at once from the pressure beneath which she had bent; and the skill of Harley, whose cousin, Mrs. Masham, had succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen's favor, was employed in bringing about the fall both of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers. … The return of a Tory House of Commons sealed his [Marlborough's] fate. His wife was dismissed from court. A masterly plan for a march into the heart of France in the opening of 1711 was foiled by the withdrawal of a part of his forces, and the negotiations which had for some time been conducted between the French and English Ministers without his knowledge marched rapidly to a close. … At the opening of 1712 the Whig majority of the House of Lords was swamped by the creation of twelve Tory peers. Marlborough was dismissed from his command, charged with peculation, and condemned as guilty by a vote of the House of Commons. He at once withdrew from England, and with his withdrawal all opposition to the peace was at an end."

_J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, section 9, chapter 9._

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Added to other reasons for opposition to the war, the death of the Emperor Joseph I., which occurred in April, 1711, had entirely reversed the situation in Europe out of which the war proceeded. The Archduke Charles, whom the allies had been striving to place on the Spanish throne, was now certain to be elected Emperor. He received the imperial crown, in fact, in December, 1711. By this change of fortune, therefore, he became a more objectionable claimant of the Spanish crown than Louis XIV. 's grandson had been.

See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1711.

_Earl Stanhope, History of England, Reign of Anne, chapters 12-15._

"Round the fall of Marlborough has gathered the interest attaching to the earliest political crisis at all resembling those of quite recent times. It is at this moment that Party Government in the modern sense actually commenced. William the Third with military instinct had always been reluctant to govern by means of a party. Bound as he was, closely, to the Whigs, he employed Tory Ministers. … The new idea of a homogeneous government was working itself into shape under the mild direction of Lord Somers; but the form finally taken under Sir Robert Walpole, which has continued to the present time, was as yet some way off. Marlborough's notions were those of the late King. Both abroad and at home he carried out the policy of William. He refused to rely wholly upon the Whigs, and the extreme Tories were not given employment. The Ministry of Godolphin was a composite administration, containing at one time, in 1705, Tories like Harley and St. John as well as Whigs such as Sunderland and Halifax. … Lord Somers was a type of statesman of a novel order at that time. … In the beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare to find a man attaining the highest political rank who was unconnected by birth or training or marriage with any of the great 'governing families,' as they have been called. Lord Somers was the son of a Worcester attorney. … It was fortunate for England that Lord Somers should have been the foremost man of the Whig party at the time when constitutional government, as we now call it, was in course of construction. By his prudent counsel the Whigs were guided through the difficult years at the end of Queen Anne's reign; and from the ordeal of seeing their rivals in power they certainly managed, as a party, to emerge on the whole with credit. Although he was not nominally their leader, the paramount influence in the Tory party was Bolingbroke's; and that the Tories suffered from the defects of his great qualities, no unprejudiced critic can doubt. Between the two parties, and at the head of the Treasury through the earlier years of the reign, stood Godolphin, without whose masterly knowledge of finance and careful attention to the details of administration Marlborough's policy would have been baffled and his campaigns remained unfought. To Godolphin, more than to any other one man, is due the preponderance of the Treasury control in public affairs. It was his administration, during the absence of Marlborough on the Continent, which created for the office of Lord Treasurer its paramount importance, and paved the way for Sir Robert Walpole's government of England under the title of First Lord of the Treasury. … Marlborough saw and always admitted that his victories were due in large measure to the financial skill of Godolphin. To this statesman's lasting credit it must be remembered that in a venal age, when the standards of public honesty were so different from those which now prevail, Godolphin died a poor man. … Bolingbroke is interesting to us as the most striking figure among the originators of the new parliamentary system. With Marlborough disappeared the type of Tudor statesmen modified by contact with the Stuarts. He was the last of the Imperial Chancellors. Bolingbroke and his successor Walpole were the earlier types of constitutional statesmen among whom Mr. Pitt and, later, Mr. Gladstone stand pre-eminent. … He and his friends, opponents of Marlborough, and contributors to his fall, are interesting to us mainly as furnishing the first examples of 'Her Majesty's Opposition,' as the authors of party government and the prototypes of cabinet ministers of to-day. Their ways of thought, their style of speech and of writing, may be dissimilar to those now in vogue, but they show greater resemblance to those of modern politicians than to those of the Ministers of William or of the Stuarts. Bolingbroke may have appeared a strange product of the eighteenth century to his contemporaries, but he would not have appeared peculiarly misplaced among the colleagues of Lord Randolph Churchill or Mr. Chamberlain."

_R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen, chapter 3._

ALSO IN: _W. Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough, chapters 89-107._

_W. Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole, volume 1, chapters 5-6._

_G. Saintsbury, Marlborough._

_G. W. Cooke, Memoirs of Bolingbroke, volume 1, chapters 6-13._

_J. C. Collins, Bolingbroke._

_A. Hassall, Life of Bolingbroke, chapter 3._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1711-1714. The Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Act.