amused, and prevent him from running foul of their ship, so, in this treatise, his object is to afford such temporary diversion to the wits and free-thinkers of the day (who drew their arguments from the Leviathan of Hobbes) as may restrain them from injuring the State by propagating wild theories in religion and politics. The allegory of the three brothers, and the general character and tendency of this extraordinary book, will be examined in the second part of the present work.'

History, 1700-1745:-Burnet, Rapin.

Burnet's History of his Own Times, closing with the year 1713, was published soon after his death in 1715. Burnet was a Scotchman, and a very decided Whig. Exiled by James II., he attached himself to the Prince of Orange, and was actively engaged in all the intrigues which paved the way for the Revolution. The History of his Own Times, though ill-arranged and inaccurate, is yet, owing to its contemporary character, a valuable original source of information for the period between the Restoration and 1713. Rapin, a French refugee, published in 1725 the best complete history of England that had as yet appeared. It was translated twice, and long remained a standard work.

Of the theology and philosophy of the period we reserve our sketch till after we have examined the progress of general literature between 1745 and 1800.

Johnson. Poetry, 1745-1800:- Gray, Glover, Akenside, Young, Shenstone, Collins, Mason, Warton, Churchill, Falconer, Chatterton, Beattie, Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Darwin, Walcot, Gifford, Bloomfield.

The grand yet grotesque figure of Samuel Johnson holds the central place among the writers of the second half of the eighteenth century. In all literary réunions he took the undisputed lead, by the power and brilliancy of his conversation, which, indeed, as recorded by Boswell, is a more valuable possession than any, or all, of his published works. His influence upon England was eminently conservative; his manly good sense, his moral courage, his wit, readiness, and force as a disputant, were all exerted to keep English society where it was, and prevent the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau from gaining ground. His success was signal. Not that there were wanting on the other side either gifted minds, or an impressible audience; Hume, Gibbon, and Priestley were sceptics of no mean order of ability; and Boswell's own example1 shows that, had there been no counteracting force at work, an enthusiastic admiration for Rousseau might easily have become fashionable in England. But while Johnson lived and talked, the revolutionary party could never gain that mastery in the intellectual arena, and that ascendency in society, which it had obtained in France. After his death the writings of Burke carried on the sort of conservative propaganda which he had initiated.

Johnson was born at Lichfield, in the year 1709. His father was a native of Derbyshire, but had settled in Lichfield as a bookseller. After having received the rudiments of a classical education at various country schools, he was entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in the year 1728. His father about this time suffered heavy losses in busi

1 See Hume's Autobiography.

ness, in consequence of which Johnson had to struggle for many years against the deepest poverty. Nor were either his mental or bodily constitution so healthful and vigorous as to compensate for the frowns of fortune. He seems to have inherited from his mother's family the disease of scrofula, or the king's evil, for which he was taken up to London, at the age of three years, to be touched by Queen Anne-the ancient superstition concerning the efficacy of the royal touch not having then wholly died out. His mind was a prey during life to that most mysterious malady, hypochondria, which exhibited itself in a morbid melancholy, varying at different times in intensity, but never completely shaken off and also in an incessant haunting fear of insanity. Under the complicated miseries of his condition, religion constantly sustained him, and deserted him not, till, at the age of seventy-five, full of years and honours, his much-tried and long-suffering soul was released. In his boyhood, he tells us, he had got into a habit of wandering about the fields on Sundays reading, instead of going to church, and the religious lessons early taught him by his mother were considerably dimmed; but at Oxford, the work of that excellent man, though somewhat cloudy writer, William Law, entitled A Serious Call to a Holy Life, fell into his hands, and made so profound an impression upon him, that from that time forward, though he used to lament the shortcomings in his practice, religion was ever, in the main, the actuating principle of his life.

After leaving Oxford, he held a situation as undermaster in a grammar-school for some months. But this was a kind of work for which he was utterly unfitted, and he was compelled to give it up. He went to Birmingham, where he obtained some trifling literary work. In 1735 he married a Mrs. Porter, a widow, and soon after, as a means of subsistence, opened a boarding school, in which, however, he failed. He now resolved to try his fortune in

London. He settled there with his wife in 1737, and supported himself for many years by writing-principally by his contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine, which had been established by Cave about the year 1730, and is still carried on. His Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1747. The price stipulated for from the booksellers was £1,575, and the work was to be completed in three years. The Rambler, a series of papers on miscellaneous subjects, on the model of the Spectator, was commenced by him in 1750, and concluded in 1752. This and various other works, which appeared from time to time, joined to his unrivalled excellence as a talker, which made his company eagerly sought after by persons of all ranks, gradually won for Johnson a considerable reputation; and, after the accession of George III., he received, through the kindness of Lord Bute, a pension of £300 a year. This was in 1762. He continued to reside in London-with but short intervals, on the occasions of his tours to the Hebrides, to Wales, and to France-till his death in 1784.

Johnson's works-excepting the Dictionary, a tragedy called Irene, a few poems, the Lives of the Poets,' some other biographies, and a short novel, the famous Rasselas -consist of essays, very multifarious in their scope, discussing questions of politics, manners, trade, agriculture, art, and criticism. The bulk of these were composed for the Rambler, the Idler, and the Adventurer. His prose style, cumbrous, antithetical, and pompous, yet in his hands possessing generally great dignity and strength, and sometimes even, as in Rasselas, rising to remarkable beauty and nobleness, was so influential upon the men of his day that it caused a complete revolution, for a time, in English style, and by no means for the better; since inferior men, though they could easily appropriate its

See p. 519.

peculiarities or defects-its long words, its balanced clauses, its laboured antitheses-could not with equal ease emulate its excellences.

Among Johnson's poems, the satire called London, an imitation of the third satire of Juvenal, and the beautiful didactic poem on The Vanity of Human Wishes, are the most deserving of notice.

Gray, the son of a scrivener in London, was educated and lived the greater part of his life at Cambridge. In the small volume of his poems there are several pieces which have gained a permanent place in our literature. The Bard, the Progress of Poesy, and the Ode On a distant Prospect of Eton College, are all, in their different ways, excellent. As a writer he was indolent and fastidious; to the former quality we probably owe it that his writings are so few, to the latter that many of them are so excellent. The famous Elegy in a Country Churchyard was first published in a magazine in 1750. The melancholy beauty of these lovely lines is enhanced by the severity and purity of the style.

Richard Glover, the son of a London merchant, produced the first edition of his blank verse epic, Leonidas, in 1737. It has not much merit, but at the time of its first appearance was extravagantly praised for political and party reasons; since every high-flown sentiment in praise of patriotism, disinterestedness, and love of liberty, was interpreted by the Opposition into a damning reflection on the corrupt practices, and the truckling spirit towards foreigners, by which Sir Robert Walpole's government was supposed to be characterised. In its present finished state, as a poem of twelve books, it first came out in 1770. The Athenaid, a sequel to the Leonidas, and in the same metre, but extending to thirty books, was published after the author's death in 1785; it is a dull versified chronicle of the successes gained by the Athenians in the Persian war. The ballad of Hosier's Ghost is the only composition of Glover's that is worth remembering.

Mark Akenside was the son of a butcher at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The poem by which he is best known, the Pleasures of Imagination (1744), was suggested by a series of papers on the same subject (Nos. 411–421), contributed by Addison to the Spectator. But the analysis of the plea

1 See pp. 464, 520.