of Hardy, just as in England we see the Spectator and Pope's neat verse following a rugged past. This will show us how eager was the yearning, of cultivated men at least, for civilization. Boileau was a most useful ally in clearing away the encumbrances of the past, and his satirical poems still remain as models of neat and dexterous verse. The best qualities of Pope-condensation and intellectual clearness-we find in Boileau, who lacks Pope's occasional roughness of temper and personal bias. How good Pope was at his best we may see in the "Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," which is really Pope's masterpiece.

Since Boileau's and Pope's satirical writings, in spite of great changes in the popular taste, still hold their place as classics, we may form a more complete notion of their success in their own day, when these two writers said in the best form what their contemporaries were most anxious to hear. Boileau's message on literary matters was almost omnipotent in France, and through France almost everywhere in Europe, until a comparatively recent time; and though in his own country, since the outbreak of romanticism, his reputation has suffered, his great literary skill is still admired. Of course it is not merely his word that controlled the taste of this great people-he was but the best mouthpiece of the prevailing sentiments; but his wit and skill lent additional force to what he had to say. In very much the same way Pope's name is given to the whole of the English literary movement of the last century, though with great inaccuracy, as I shall presently try to show. Since both these writers especially distinguished themselves in satirical poetry, one cannot help wondering what it was in the conditions of their times that made satire so powerful a weapon. A satirist nowadays-one who should write in verse, at least-would be laughed at for his pains. This form of writing was sub

sequently tried, to be sure, by Gifford in his "Baviad" and his "Mæviad," by Byron in his "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," to mention the most prominent examples, but these writers only galvanized what was a dead form. An attack on the satire had been already made by Bowles in his edition of Pope (1797), when he asked whether the attitude of the satirist is one which any individual can assume towards his fellow-men. This attitude of condemnation of our fellow-men is taken by every person living, at home and abroad, in private talk, in letters, and in public writing, but its mode of expressing itself is changed. Mr. Pattison says that just as the prophet comes forward to rebuke sin, so does the satirist deliver the judg ment of society on social conduct, literary taste, and such matters as the law does not attempt to cover. That is true, but the prophet and the satirist would now both be laughed at. Society has taken the control of the matters that formerly interested satirists into its own hands. It has become a democracy where every man is invited to contribute what he knows, and no one is permitted to rise and speak, as if from an upper-story window, to the populace below. And that, I take it, was what the satirist did. It was all very well when education was confined to comparatively few, and the general bent was towards rudeness, but nowadays no such self-exaltation could be endured. Satire has become the possession of the populace; it does not belong to a privileged class. We should be as impatient of a professional satirist as we are of any one who undertakes to give instruction in etiquette; and yet the present day is not wholly indifferent to matters of deportment, as any one may see by reading the novels of the last century.

As we noticed a few moments ago, the whole poetical movement of the eighteenth century is generally said to

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,