since his time have been indebted to his example; and the more they have been able to imitate him, the better they have succeeded.-WILLIAM CONGREVE.

Dryden's versification I take to be the most musical that has yet appeared in rhyme: round, sweet, pompous, spirited, and various, it flows with such a happy volubility, such an animated and masterly negligence, as I am afraid will not soon be excelled. From the fineness of his ear, his prose, too, is perhaps the sweetest, the most mellow and sonorous, that the English language has yet produced. -ARMSTRONG: Essays.

[For Parallel between Pope and Dryden, see Pope.]

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

Biographies: By Dr. Johnson, Malone, Sir Walter Scott, Mitford, G. Saintsbury, edited in 1881 by Morley, in the "English Men of Letters" series.

Brief Lives by Anderson and Chal

mers.

Editions of Works: By Sir Walter Scott, 18 vols.; by Mitford, 5 vols.; by Malone, 4 vols.; the Globe edi

tion, edited by W. D. Christie; and the recent Riverside edition, by Francis J. Child.

Essays on Dryden: By Dr. Warton, Professor Wilson, Macaulay, Hallam, Taine, J. R. Lowell (“Among My Books"), David Masson, Armstrong, Campbell, and Hazlitt. Howitt's "Homes and Haunts of the British Poets."

VII.

CLASSICAL AGE OF POPE, ADDISON,

AND SWIFT.

A.D. 1700-1745.

EXALTATION OF FORM OVER MATTER.

CULMINATION OF CLASSICAL POETRY UNDER ALEXANDER

POPE.

CREATION OF THE PERIODICAL ESSAY BY JOSEPH ADDISON AND SIR RICHARD STEELE.

ENTRANCE OF LITERATURE INTO THE SPHERE OF POLITICS.-JONATHAN SWIFT.

PREVALENCE OF ENGLISH DEISM.

DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY IN THOMSON'S "SEASONS." COMMENCEMENT OF ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON CONTINENTAL LIFE AND LITERATURE.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CLASSICAL AGE

OF POPE, ADDISON, AND SWIFT,

WITH HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, AND ART NOTES.

Death of Willaccession of

iam III., and

Anne, the sec

ond daughter who was marGeorge of Den

of James II.,

ried to Prince

mark, 1702.

EXALTATION OF FORM OVER MATTER. THE most prominent feature of this age, both in prose and verse, was the exaltation of form over matter. Finished and correct style, which had been more or less sought after by the writers of the Restoration, became a mania in the early part of the eighteenth century. Indeed, so much energy was expended in polishing diction, balancing periods, and elaborating metaphors that little remained to be employed on ideas. Commonplace matter met with applause if its phraseology came up to the critical standard of the time. This classical spirit pervaded Appearance of all departments of literature; it perfected Eng-rant, the first lish prose, but it dwarfed the drama, and made March 11, 1702. poetry mechanical and artificial. The age has been more diversely criticised than any other in English literature. Its contemporary critics, as well as those of the succeeding age-particularly Dr. Samuel Johnson-praised it to excess, over-estimated its influence, and pronounced it the Augustan Age; while writers of the ninecentury have censured it severely for its

the Daily Cou

daily paper,

War of the

Spanish Suc

cession, 1702

1713.

Conquest of
Gibraltar by
Admiral

Rooke, 1704.

polite scepticism, condemned its artificiality, and denounced it as an age of utilitarianism and satire.

CULMINATION OF CLASSICAL POETRY UNDER ALEXANDER POPE.

Decline of the theatre. The plays written

were dull and stupid.

Addison's

"Cato," 1713.

That classical correctness of style which Dryden had introduced into English poetry culminated under Pope, and degenerated into artificiality under Pope's imitators. Pope is the during this age greatest didactic poet in the language, and may almost be classed with Boileau-his "analogue in French literature"-in the relation of disciple and master. In all his work he followed carefully the rules laid down in "L'Art Poetique," produced his "Essay on Criticism" in imitation. of it, and doubtless the French poet's mockheroic poem, "Lutrin," was his model in the composition of "The Rape of the Lock." [See "Age of Dryden and the Restoration-France."] But Pope's works, though rigidly classical, are exalted by an acuteness and solidity of thought, and a faculty of expression so brilliant, so easy, and so fluent as to be unequalled in the entire range of English poetry. Not so with his less gifted contemporaries. The same verbal nicety and symmetrical arrangement of nouns and adjectives characterize the verses of the minor poets-Gay, Prior, Young, Addison, Tickell, Philips; their poetry is polished with mythological eloquence, and abundant quotations from the Greek and Latin, but expresses, for the most part, commonplace sentiments and maxims, rather than natural beauty and lofty ideas. Of the lesser poets three deserve special notice.

Commencement of English opera with John Gay's

The Beggar's Opera," 1728.

Barton Booth
(1681-1733) was
the greatest
actor of the
time.

John Gay (1688-1732) was an easy, indolent, amiable writer, who produced two descriptive poems of interest-"The Shepherd's Week, in