This period extends from 1660, the year Charles II was restored to the throne,
until about 1789. The prevailing characteristic of the literature of the Renaissance
had been its reliance on poetic inspiration or what today might be called imagination.
The inspired conceptions of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Milton, the true originality
of Spenser, and the daring poetic style of Donne all support this generalization.
Furthermore, although nearly all these poets had been far more bound by formal
and stylistic conventions than modern poets are, they had developed a large
variety of forms and of rich or exuberant styles into which individual poetic
expression might fit. In the succeeding period, however, writers reacted against
both the imaginative flights and the ornate or startling styles and forms of
the previous era. The quality of the later age is suggested by its writers'
admiration for Ben Jonson and his disciples; the transparent and apparently
effortless poetic medium of the “school of Ben,” along with its
emphasis on good taste, moderation, and the Greek and Latin classics as models,
appealed profoundly to the new generation. m7j24jh
Thus, the restoration of Charles II ushered in a literature characterized by
reason, moderation, good taste, deft management, and simplicity. The historical
parallel between the early imperialism of Rome and the restored English monarchy,
both of which had replaced republican institutions, was not lost on the ruling
and learned classes. Their appreciation of the literature of the time of the
Roman emperor Augustus led to a widespread acceptance of the new English literature
and encouraged a grandeur of tone in the poetry of the period, the later phase
of which is often referred to as Augustan. In addition, the ideals of impartial
investigation and scientific experimentation promulgated by the newly founded
Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge (established in 1662)
were influential in the development of clear and simple prose as an instrument
of rational communication.
Finally, the great philosophical and political treatises of the time emphasize
rationalism. Even in the earlier 17th century, Francis Bacon had moved in this
direction by advocating reasoning and scientific investigation in Advancement
of Learning (1605) and The New Atlantis (1627). Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1690), by John Locke, is the product of a belief in experience as the exclusive
basis of knowledge, a view pushed to its logical extreme in An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding (1748) by David Hume. Locke himself continued to profess
faith in divine revelation, but this residual belief was weakened among the
similarly rationalist Deists, who tended to base religion on what reason could
find in the world God had created around humans.
In political thought, the arbitrary acceptance of the monarch's divine right
to rule (a conception popular in the Renaissance) had so nearly succumbed to
skeptical criticism that Thomas Hobbes in his Leviathan (1651) found it necessary
to defend the idea of political absolutism with a rationally conceived sanction.
According to him, the monarch should rule not by divine right but by an original
and indissoluble social contract in order to secure universal peace and material
gratification. Similarly rationalistic, but opposed to this rigorous subordination
of all organs of the state to central control, were Locke's two Treatises on
Government (1690), in which he stated that the authority of the governor is
derived from the always revocable consent of the governed and that the people's
welfare is the only proper object of that authority.
Perhaps the greatest historical work in English is History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire (6 volumes, 1776-1788), by Edward Gibbon. Notable for
its stately, balanced style, it is permeated with rationalistic skepticism and
distrust of emotion, particularly religious emotion.
The successive stages of literary taste during the period of the Restoration
and the 18th century are conveniently referred to as the ages of Dryden, Pope,
and Johnson, after the three great literary figures that, one after another,
carried on the so-called classical tradition in literature. The age as a whole
is sometimes called the Augustan age, or the classical or neoclassical period.
Age of Dryden
The poetry of John Dryden possesses a grandeur, force, and fullness of tone
that were eagerly received by readers still having something in common with
the Elizabethans. At the same time, however, his poetry set the tone of the
new age in achieving a new clarity and in establishing a self-limiting, somewhat
impersonal canon of moderation and good taste. His polished heroic couplet (a
unit of two rhyming lines of iambic pentameter, generally end-stopped), which
he inherited from less accomplished predecessors and then developed, became
the dominant form in the composition of longer poems.
In a number of critical works Dryden defined the stylistic restraint, compression,
clarity, and common sense that he exemplified in his own poetry and that he
showed to be lacking in much of the poetry of the preceding age, particularly
in the exuberant and mechanically complex metaphorical wit of the older metaphysical
school. His reputation rests primarily on satire. This form became the dominant
poetic genre of the age, both because of the religious and political factionalism
of the times and because mocking denunciation of the ludicrousness or rascality
of the opposition comes naturally to an age with so strong a public sense of
norms of behavior. Absalom and Achitophel (1681-1682) and Mac Flecknoe (1682)
are the most remarkable of Dryden's political satires. Among his other poetic
works are noteworthy translations of Roman satirists and of the works of Virgil,
and the Pindaric ode “Alexander's Feast,” a tour de force of varied
cadences, which was published in 1697.
The bulk of Dryden's work was in drama. By means of it, following the new mode
of living of the professional literary man, he could derive his support from
a large public rather than from private patrons. In his heroic tragedies The
Conquest of Granada (1670) and All for Love; or, The World Well Lost (1678),
a rewriting of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra in the new taste, Dryden showed
a different and not always satisfying side of his talent and exemplified the
dominant quality of all Restoration tragedy. In order to achieve splendor and
surprise on the stage, he sacrificed reality of characterization and consistency
in motivation for sensual display in exotic locales and extravagance in plot
and situation, presented in a style verging on the bombastic. The affinities
of this kind of drama are with Beaumont and Fletcher rather than with the great
Elizabethan age; and the indirect influence of Ben Jonson is apparent also,
for these two men were Jonson's disciples. Probably the best example of this
genre of tragedy was produced by Thomas Otway, whose Venice Preserved (1682)
avoids the worst excesses to which this form is liable and also possesses considerable
tenderness and sensibility. By this time, however, the vogue of heroic tragedy
was coming to an end; the style already had been successfully parodied in The
Rehearsal (1671), by George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and his collaborators.
The comedy of the time is much more successful than the tragedy. It is derived
directly from the comedies of Ben Jonson but tries for more refinement while
displaying less strength. In a cool, satiric spirit, it criticizes middle-class
ambition and other variations from the courtly social norm, of which the canons
are aristocratic good taste and good sense, rarely conventional morality. In
the eyes of succeeding generations, the chief defects of Restoration comedy
are its reduction of sentiment and emotion to silliness and its frequent amorality.
Reaction against this type of comedy, known as the comedy of manners, already
had developed by the time that its greatest practitioner, William Congreve,
was displaying his subtle artistry in Love For Love (1695) and The Way of the
World (1700).
Just as Dryden's poetry defined the tone of his time, so too did his easy, informal,
clear prose style, notably in his Essay of Dramatic Poesie (1668) and in various
prefaces to his plays and translations. Noteworthy prose of a rather different
nature was produced by two other figures of the age, Samuel Pepys and John Bunyan.
The appetite of the period for life at all levels, but particularly for the
life of the senses, is suggested by the secret diary of Samuel Pepys, a high
official of the Admiralty Office. This extraordinary work, valuable as it is
as a document of contemporary taste, has much to say of the private, un-heroic
life and longings of people of all times. A figure in stronger contrast to Pepys
could hardly be imagined than John Bunyan, a Puritan preacher, completely alien
to the aristocratic and professional world of letters. Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's
Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come (1st part published in 1678;
2nd part, 1684) and The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), two rough-hewn,
moving, allegorical narratives of the human journey at the level of the fundamental
verities of life, death, and religion. The first of these is now a literary
classic, but in spite of the penetrating characterization and vitality of both
works, they initially attained popularity only among artisans, merchants, and
the poor.
Age of Pope
In the age of Alexander Pope (dated from about the death of Dryden in 1700
to Pope's death in 1744), the classical spirit in English literature reached
its highest point, and at the same time other forces became manifest. Dryden's
poetry had achieved grandeur, amplitude, and sublimity within a particular definition
of good taste and good sense and under the tutelage of the Roman and Greek classics.
To the poetry of Pope this characterization applies even more stringently. More
than any other English poet, he submitted himself to the requirement that the
expressive force of poetic genius should issue forth only in a formulation as
reasonable, lucid, balanced, compressed, final, and perfect as the power of
human reason can make it. Pope did not have Dryden's majesty. Perhaps, given
his predilection for correctness of detail, he could not have had it. Also,
the readers of succeeding times have concluded that the dictates of reason do
not all converge on only one poetic formula, just as the heroic couplet, which
Pope brought to final perfection, is not necessarily the most generally suitable
of English poetic forms. Nevertheless, the ease, harmony, and grace of Pope's
poetic line are still impressive, and his quality of precise but never labored
expression of thought remains unequaled.
Pope's reputation rests in large part on his satires, but his didactic bent
led him to formulate in verse the Essay on Criticism (1711) and The Essay on
Man (1732-1734). The former attempts to show that poetry must be modeled on
nature; but his conception of nature, a traditional one shared by all his contemporaries,
differs from that of succeeding generations. For Pope, nature meant the rules
that right reason has discovered to be immanent in all things, so that what
the experience of reasonable minds through the ages has shown to be the greatest
poetry—namely, that of classical antiquity—provides a perfect model
for modern times. A similar conservatism reappears in the Essay on Man, which
concludes with the much-debated generalization “Whatever is, is right.”
Pope's brilliant satiric masterpiece, The Rape of the Lock (1712; revised edition
1714), makes an epic theme of a trifling drawing-room episode: the contention
arising from a young lord's having covertly snipped a lock of hair from a young
lady's head. His most sustained satire, The Dunciad (1728; final version 1743),
follows Dryden's Mac Flecknoe in its elegantly pointed, often malicious but
always high-spirited mockery of the literary dullards who were Pope's enemies.
Like Dryden, Pope made translations of classical works, notably of the Iliad,
which was a great popular and financial success. His edition of Shakespeare's
works bears witness to a range of taste not usually ascribed to him.
It is only natural that the 18th-century preoccupation with the power of reason
and good sense should have produced a large number of works in the more sober
medium of prose. Jonathan Swift, who was, like Pope, a Tory conservative for
the latter half of his life and a satirist, wrote a number of mordantly satirical
prose narratives in which a profound and despairing perception of human stupidities
and evil are in contrast with the social criticism of his great contemporaries.
Swift's Tale of a Tub (1704) reduces the quarrels among three important religious
divisions of his day to an allegory of three disreputable brothers. His generous
anger on behalf of the poor of Ireland produced “A Modest Proposal”
(1729), in which, with horrifying mock seriousness, he proposed that the children
of the poor should be raised for slaughter as food for the rich. His best-known
work, Gulliver's Travels (1726), purports to be a ship doctor's account of his
voyages into strange places, but in reality it is a castigation of the human
race. The accounts of Gulliver's first two voyages are often read as a children's
book. The last part abandons, however, delicate fancy and unmasks the selfish
and sick bestiality of humanity in the guise of the so-called Yahoos, who are
the savage and improvident servants of a race of apparently reasonable and noble
horses, called Houyhnhnms. This work, like all of Swift's, is written in a prose
of unrivaled lucidity, energy, and polemical skill.
Similarly noteworthy for the quality of their prose are the Spectator papers
(1711-1712; 1714), written mainly by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. Published
daily, these essays, like many others, corresponded to the newly felt need of
the day for popular journalism, but their enlightened comment and their criticism
of contemporary society separate them from the mass of similar publications.
The main intent of Addison and Steele may be defined in their own words: “To
enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” In a series
of informal, conversational essays describing the activities of various ideal
representatives of social groups, such as the Tory country squire Sir Roger
de Coverley and the Whig merchant Sir Andrew Freeport, Addison and Steele salvaged
and united some of the best sides of the contemporary English character. The
lightly borne, free-and-easy manners of the court and the older landed classes
should, according to these papers, exist side by side with the industry, uprightness,
and deeply felt morality of the newly rich city merchants. The amorality associated
with the one and the stubborn narrowness of the other should disappear. The
emphasis on public decorum and individual rectitude and on sympathy with one's
fellow beings in the Spectator papers is a measure of their distance from the
cool indifference and frequent licentiousness of much Restoration literature,
particularly comedy, although the purpose of both was to represent reason, moderation,
and common sense.
A quite different kind of journalism is represented by the work of the middle-class
adventurer, hack writer, and political agent Daniel Defoe. Separated from the
life of the upper classes and their erudite writers, as Bunyan had been before
him, he produced, among many pieces of commissioned writing, a series of purportedly
true but actually fictitious memoirs and confessions. The first of these, and
the greatest, is Robinson Crusoe (1719), which reports the life and adventures
of a shipwrecked sailor.
Age of Johnson
The age of Samuel Johnson, from 1744 to about 1784, was a time of changing
literary ideals. The developed classicism and literary conservatism associated
with Johnson fought a rear-guard action against the cult of sentiment and feeling
associated in various ways with the harbingers of the coming age of romanticism.
Johnson composed poetry that continued the traditions and forms of Pope, but
he is best known as a prose writer and as an extraordinarily gifted conversationalist
and literary arbiter in the cultivated urban life of his time. His conservatism
and sturdy common sense are what might be expected given his intellectual tradition,
but his individual quality has little to do with literary tendencies. His curiously
lovable and upright personality, along with his intellectual preeminence and
idiosyncrasies, have been preserved in the most famous of English biographies,
the Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), by James Boswell, a Scottish writer with
an appetite for literary celebrities.
Johnson worked his way up from poverty by honest literary labors, among which
was his Dictionary of the English Language (1755). A great success, it was the
first such work prepared according to modern standards of lexicography. Like
Addison and Steele, Johnson produced a series of journalistic essays, The Rambler
(1750-1752), but because of their somewhat pedantic style and Latinate vocabulary,
they lack the easy informality of the Spectator papers and serve to accentuate
the opposition between his neoclassical formality and the succeeding romantic
ideal of heart-to-heart communication. Johnson's philosophical tale Rasselas
(1759), of which the moral is that “human life is everywhere a state in
which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed,” is reminiscent
of Swift (as well as of his contemporary the French writer Voltaire in his tale
Candide) in its perception of the vanity of human wishes. For all his pessimism,
however, the amazing detail, independence, and intellectual facility of Johnson's
critical biographies of English poets since 1600 (Lives of the Poets, 1779-1781),
written in his old age, show what critical discrimination and intellectual integrity
can accomplish.
Johnson's friend Oliver Goldsmith was a curious mixture of the old and the new.
His novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) begins with dry humor but passes quickly
into tearful calamity. His poem The Deserted Village (1770) is in form reminiscent
of Pope, but in the tenderness of its sympathy for the lower classes it foreshadows
the romantic age. In such plays as She Stoops to Conquer (1773) Goldsmith, like
the younger Richard Sheridan in his School for Scandal (1777), demonstrated
an older tradition of satirical quality and artistic adroitness that was to
be anathema to a younger generation.
The signs of this newer feeling, which resulted in romanticism, can be traced
in the poetry of William Cowper and of Thomas Gray. The cultivation of a pensive
and melancholy sensibility and the interruption of the rule of the heroic couplet,
as in Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” (1751), hint
at the period to come, as does Gray's interest in medieval, non-classical literature.
New interests are even more obvious in the highly original poetry of the self-educated
artist and engraver William Blake. His work consists in part of simple, almost
childlike lyrics (Songs of Innocence, 1789), as well as of powerful but lengthy
and obscure declarations of a new mythological vision of life (The Book of Thel,
1789). All Blake's poetry expresses a revolt against the ideal of reason (which
he considered destructive to life) and advocates the life of feeling—but
in a more vital and assertive sense than is the case with the other previously
mentioned pre-romantics. Similarly robust and passionate are the lyrics of the
Scottish poet Robert Burns, which are characterized by his use of regional Scottish
vernacular. The simplicity, forcefulness, and powerful emotion of the ancient
ballads of the Scottish-English border region, as revealed in Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry (1765), by Bishop Thomas Percy, were likewise influential in
the development of romanticism.
Among writers of the novel—a newly popular form in this period—an
advocate of sentiment and simple, innocent feelings had already appeared in
the person of Samuel Richardson. In his sentimental novel Clarissa (1747-1748),
the plight of a young, innocent girl, destroyed by the man she loves, is represented
through lengthy letters interchanged among the characters. This device permits
an unprecedented revelation of motives and feelings. Richardson's contemporary
Henry Fielding evinced his connection with the earlier satirical spirit in his
novel Joseph Andrews (1742), which parodies Richardson's other novel of virtue
besieged, Pamela (1740). Fielding's greatest novel, Tom Jones (1749), reveals
a robust and healthy spirit of good sense and comedy, in which well-intentioned
vigor wins out over excessive hypocrisy. Fielding's contemporary, the Scottish-born
Tobias Smollett, wrote a number of novels of picaresque adventure, the last
and probably best of which is Humphry Clinker (1771). The Life and Opinions
of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767), the masterpiece of another great
British novelist of the century, Laurence Sterne, indulges in the new cult of
sentiment, but by reason of its cast of eccentric characters and the skilled
weaving of the most extraordinary behavior into the depiction of their personalities,
this novel lies outside the usual historical categories.