have been made under Pope's influence. But the exact truth of this statement may well be doubted. For one thing, we find frequent proof of what Mr. Symonds states ("Renaissance in Italy," v. 2): "It seems to be a law of intellectual development that the highest works of art can only be achieved when the forces which produced them are already doomed, and in the act of disappearance.' Only in this way, perhaps, can the artist get the perspective without losing the original inspiration; but, whatever the reason, we see this law confirmed by all our observation. Dante expressed all the majesty of the Middle Ages just as they were about to disappear forever. Even in Shakspere's lifetime, the Elizabethan drama, in the hands of his contemporaries, was beginning to decline, and, at the very moment when Pope had routed his adversaries, had proved and illustrated the neatness of his chosen form and the power of his cool common-sense in the discussion of many baffling questions, the rule of his formal verse began to be doubted, and new voices were heard discussing strange problems.* Cowper, to be sure, said that Pope "made poetry a mere mechanic art,

And every warbler had his tune by heart," but this statement shows the exaggeration of first attempts at organized revolt, and fails to do sufficient justice to some of the contemporary resistance to his influence. Swift, for instance, represented a very differ

* Allan Ramsay, the painter, and son of the poet, April 29, 1778 (vide Boswell's "Johnson "), said: "I am old enough to have been a contemporary of Pope. His poetry was highly admired in his lifetime, more, a great deal, than after his death." JOHNSON: "Sir, it has not been less admired since his death; no authors ever had so much faith in their own lifetime as Voltaire and Pope; and Pope's poetry has been as, much admired since his death as during his life: it has only not been as much talked of; but that is owing to its now being more distant, and people having other writings to talk of."

ent form of art. Gay's view of life was very unlike that of Pope, and Prior, whom we have already caught trying to imitate Spenser, wrote little poems for which he was much more indebted to French poetry than to English. A fuller study of the growth of other forms, even in Pope's time, we must delay until we turn to the study of the poetical outbreak towards the end of the century, when we shall have occasion to notice various indications that many writers were seeking greater freedom than reason and formality could give them. Now, laying aside the poetry for a while, let us observe what was done in prose at this time.

CHAPTER VII.

THE most striking and important appearance in the English literature of this period is that of the novel. Let us see how this came into existence and how it flourished. To do this it will not be necessary to refer to the stories of the later Greek writers, to discuss Apuleius's "Golden Ass," or Lucian's novelettes, still less to make extracts from the recently discovered Egyptian novels, or to begin an argument as to whether the books of Job and Ruth are or are not ancient Hebrew novels—all of these questions have their value, but they need not trouble us now. We may take it for granted that the telling of stories is one of the fundamental attributes of the human race. In the Middle Ages, our ancestors had a number of stories, chiefly in poetical form, for their delectation. Such were, first, those treating religious subjects, as versions of the Old and New Testaments, lives of saints and martyrs, and the accounts of pious men and women e. g., "The Journey of St. Brandanus to the Earthly Paradise” (cir. 1121), the "Life of the Blessed Virgin," the "Life of Thomas à Becket" (by Garnier, cir. 1182), the "Story of the Seven Sleepers," the "Life of St. Elizabeth," etc. Secondly, Norman and Breton mythical and historical tales, such as "Le Roman du Rou," ""Robert le Diable," "Richart sans Paour," of Norman origin; of Breton origin, the stories about Brutus, the Trojan, the Knights of the Holy Grail-about Merlin, Lancelot, Perceval, etc. Thirdly, the Frankish romances,

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about Charles the Great, "Le Roman d'Alexandre" (cir. 1150), a paraphrase of Curtius, with flattering references to Louis VII. and Philip Augustus; the "Roman de Troie," "Le Livre du Preux et Vaillant Jason," the "Contes" and 'Fabliaux," short stories, the prose conte being distinguished from the rhymed fabliau by its greater length. Their subjects were countless and varied, and are especially to be noticed for this-that while the romances were in a great measure, though not exclusively, the possession of the higher classes, the fabliaux were the exclusive property of the populace. No precise description can be given that shall apply to all. It is well to notice that they referred to the incidents of every-day life, which were narrated in a comic way. In them we find the originals of some of Chaucer's least poetical tales, and of some of the stories that are still handed down from one age to another by word of mouth ;* they turned to ridicule all pre

*The wanderings of stories form an interesting part of literary history. The fact is, that there is nothing rarer than originality, and a good novel in one language is sure to be translated into every other. A curious instance of the wide use of a single plot may be seen in the travels of the story of the "Widow of Ephesus." It gets its name from the narrative as it appears in Petronius; but it is also a Chinese tale, as well as Persian and Arabian and Turkish. Its earliest appearance in India was in the Pantchatantra, and it probably was carried to neighboring countries by the Buddhists. It entered Europe in the collection, the "Seven Sages," and speedily found its way into many fabliaux. The old story was told by Eustace Deschamps (in the fourteenth century), Brantôme (1527-1614), dramatized by Pierre Brinon (1614), and was told over again half a century later by La Fontaine, in one of his contes. St. Evremond (1678) has a translation of the same story in Petronius; in 1682 it was again dramatized; 1702, by La Motte; 1714, a comic opera; Voltaire, in “Zadig" (1747); Rétif de la Bretonne (1734-1806), in one of his "Contemporaines ;" Alfred de Musset, in "La Coupe et les Lèvres " (1832).

It appeared in Italy and Spain with the "Seven Sages." It early made its appearance in England and Scotland in metrical romances of the thir

tensions to greatness and excessive uprightness; they were the streak of realism that always exists in the human race, and most strongly when contrasted with artificial pomp. Many of the stories thus told probably described actual incidents, or some that, perhaps, had been handed down by tradition from very remote times; others may be traced to the "Gesta Romanorum" and other collections of stories made up from the Greeks and from Eastern nations: the Crusades helped to introduce these. "Reynard the Fox" is very possibly a combination into a coherent whole of a number of stories, the origin of which is like that of "Bre'r Fox" and "Bre'r Rabbit" in the Southern States, and like the many similar stories told in various remote and separate regions. Later in the Middle Ages, we come across the allegorical stories, of which the "Roman de la Rose" is the best known.* Of course this

teenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries; in a separate volume in 1665; in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Dying" (1651); Chapman dramatized it in his comedy, "The Widow's Tears," early in the seventeenth century; J. Ogilby (died 1676) wrote a poem narrating the story; Charles Johnson, a farce (1730); Goldsmith, in his "Citizen of the World" (published in 1762).

In Germany, we find it inter alios in Gellert, Wieland, Musäus, and Chamisso; Lessing began a play with this plot (vide Grisebach, “Die treulose Wittwe," Stuttgart, 1877).

Voltaire knew that the Chinese were familiar with this story; vide his "Sottisier" (Paris, 1881), p. 22. A French translation of the Chinese version had been published by a Jesuit priest in 1736.

* An interesting chapter of literary history would be a full discussion of allegories in literature during and since the Middle Ages. In the "Roman de la Rose" allegorical personages abound, drawn as crudely as the figures in ancient illustrations who are labelled on the placard issuing from their mouths. In the mysteries, too, we come across them. This proved to be a long-lived literary form. In the heroic romances of Mlle. de Scudéry, for instance, we find instances of its survival, as in the "Carte du Tendre," which was once famous for its ingenious representation of