English Literature
fellow_, we don't know what to think of _him_." He then rose up, strided to
the fire, and stood for some time laughing and exulting.
Then the oracle proceeds to talk of scorpions and natural history, denying
facts, and demanding proofs which nobody could possibly furnish:
He seemed pleased to talk of natural philosophy. "That woodcocks," said he,
"fly over the northern countries is proved, because they have been observed
at sea. Swallows certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them
conglobulate together by flying round and round, and then all in a heap
throw themselves under water and lie in the bed of a river." He told us one
of his first essays was a Latin poem upon the glowworm: I am sorry I did
not ask where it was to be found.
Then follows an astonishing array of subjects and opinions. He catalogues
libraries, settles affairs in China, pronounces judgment on men who marry
women superior to themselves, flouts popular liberty, hammers Swift
unmercifully, and adds a few miscellaneous oracles, most of which are about
as reliable as his knowledge of the hibernation of swallows.
When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning I found him highly satisfied
with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening. "Well," said he, "we had
good talk." "Yes, sir" [says I], "you tossed and gored several persons."
Far from resenting this curious mental dictatorship, his auditors never
seem to weary. They hang upon his words, praise him, flatter him, repeat
his judgments all over London the next day, and return in the evening
hungry for more. Whenever the conversation begins to flag, Boswell is like
a woman with a parrot, or like a man with a dancing bear. He must excite
the creature, make him talk or dance for the edification of the company. He
sidles obsequiously towards his hero and, with utter irrelevancy, propounds
a question of theology, a social theory, a fashion of dress or marriage, a
philosophical conundrum: "Do you think, sir, that natural affections are
born with us?" or, "Sir, if you were shut up in a castle and a newborn babe
with you, what would you do?" Then follow more Johnsonian laws, judgments,
oracles; the insatiable audience clusters around him and applauds; while
Boswell listens, with shining face, and presently goes home to write the
wonder down. It is an astonishing spectacle; one does not know whether to
laugh or grieve over it. But we know the man, and the audience, almost as
well as if we had been there; and that, unconsciously, is the superb art of
this matchless biographer.
When Johnson died the opportunity came for which Boswell had been watching
and waiting some twenty years. He would shine in the world now, not by
reflection, but by his own luminosity. He gathered together his endless
notes and records, and began to write his biography; but he did not hurry.
Several biographies of Johnson appeared, in the four years after his death,
without disturbing Boswell's perfect complacency. After seven years' labor
he gave the world his _Life of Johnson_. It is an immortal work; praise is
superfluous; it must be read to be appreciated. Like the Greek sculptors,
the little slave produced a more enduring work than the great master. The
man who reads it will know Johnson as he knows no other man who dwells
across the border; and he will lack sensitiveness, indeed, if he lay down
the work without a greater love and appreciation of all good literature.
LATER AUGUSTAN WRITERS. With Johnson, who succeeded Dryden and Pope in the
chief place of English letters, the classic movement had largely spent its
force; and the latter half of the eighteenth century gives us an imposing
array of writers who differ so widely that it is almost impossible to
classify them. In general, three schools of writers are noticeable: first,
the classicists, who, under Johnson's lead, insisted upon elegance and
regularity of style; second, the romantic poets, like Collins, Gray,
Thomson, and Burns, who revolted from Pope's artificial couplets and wrote
of nature and the human heart[197]; third, the early novelists, like Defoe
and Fielding, who introduced a new type of literature. The romantic poets
and the novelists are reserved for special chapters; and of the other
writers--Berkeley and Hume in philosophy; Robertson, Hume, and Gibbon in
history; Chesterfield and Lady Montagu in letter writing; Adam Smith in
economics; Pitt, Burke, Fox, and a score of lesser writers in politics--we
select only two, Burke and Gibbon, whose works are most typical of the
Augustan, i.e. the elegant, classic style of prose writing.
EDMUND BURKE (1729--1797)
To read all of Burke's collected works, and so to understand him
thoroughly, is something of a task. Few are equal to it. On the other hand,
to read selections here and there, as most of us do, is to get a wrong idea
of the man and to join either in fulsome praise of his brilliant oratory,
or in honest confession that his periods are ponderous and his ideas often
buried under Johnsonian verbiage. Such are the contrasts to be found on
successive pages of Burke's twelve volumes, which cover the enormous range
of the political and economic thought of the age, and which mingle fact and
fancy, philosophy, statistics, and brilliant flights of the imagination, to
a degree never before seen in English literature. For Burke belongs in
spirit to the new romantic school, while in style he is a model for the
formal classicists. We can only glance at the life of this marvelous
Irishman, and then consider his place in our literature.
LIFE. Burke was born in Dublin, the son of an Irish barrister, in 1729.
After his university course in Trinity College he came to London to study
law, but soon gave up the idea to follow literature, which in turn led him
to politics. He had the soul, the imagination of a poet, and the law was
only a clog to his progress. His two first works, _A Vindication of Natural
Society_ and _The Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_,
brought him political as well as literary recognition, and several small
offices were in turn given to him. When thirty-six years old he was elected
to Parliament as member from Wendover; and for the next thirty years he was
the foremost figure in the House of Commons and the most eloquent orator
which that body has ever known. Pure and incorruptible in his politics as
in his personal life, no more learned or devoted servant of the
Commonwealth ever pleaded for justice and human liberty. He was at the
summit of his influence at the time when the colonies were struggling for
independence; and the fact that he championed their cause in one of his
greatest speeches, "On Conciliation with America," gives him an added
interest in the eyes of American readers. His championship of America is
all the more remarkable from the fact that, in other matters, Burke was far
from liberal. He set himself squarely against the teachings of the romantic
writers, who were enthusiastic over the French Revolution; he denounced the
principles of the Revolutionists, broke with the liberal Whig party to join
the Tories, and was largely instrumental in bringing on the terrible war
with France, which resulted in the downfall of Napoleon.
It is good to remember that, in all the strife and bitterness of party
politics, Burke held steadily to the noblest personal ideals of truth and
honesty; and that in all his work, whether opposing the slave trade, or
pleading for justice for America, or protecting the poor natives of India
from the greed of corporations, or setting himself against the popular
sympathy for France in her desperate struggle, he aimed solely at the
welfare of humanity. When he retired on a pension in 1794, he had won, and
he deserved, the gratitude and affection of the whole nation.
WORKS. There are three distinctly marked periods in Burke's career, and
these correspond closely to the years in which he was busied with the
affairs of America, India, and France successively. The first period was
one of prophecy. He had studied the history and temper of the American
colonies, and he warned England of the disaster which must follow her
persistence in ignoring the American demands, and especially the American
spirit. His great speeches, "On American Taxation" and "On Conciliation
with America," were delivered in 1774 and 1775, preceding the Declaration
of Independence. In this period Burke's labor seemed all in vain; he lost
his cause, and England her greatest colony.
The second period is one of denunciation rather than of prophecy. England
had won India; but when Burke studied the methods of her victory and
understood the soulless way in which millions of poor natives were made to
serve the interests of an English monopoly, his soul rose in revolt, and
again he was the champion of an oppressed people. His two greatest speeches
of this period are "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts" and his tremendous
"Impeachment of Warren Hastings." Again he apparently lost his cause,
though he was still fighting on the side of right. Hastings was acquitted,
and the spoliation of India went on; but the seeds of reform were sown, and
grew and bore fruit long after Burke's labors were ended.
The third period is, curiously enough, one of reaction. Whether because the
horrors of the French Revolution had frightened him with the danger of
popular liberty, or because his own advance in office and power had made
him side unconsciously with the upper classes, is unknown. That he was as
sincere and noble now as in all his previous life is not questioned. He
broke with the liberal Whigs and joined forces with the reactionary Tories.
He opposed the romantic writers, who were on fire with enthusiasm over the
French Revolution, and thundered against the dangers which the
revolutionary spirit must breed, forgetting that it was a revolution which
had made modern England possible. Here, where we must judge him to have
been mistaken in his cause, he succeeded for the first time. It was due
largely to Burke's influence that the growing sympathy for the French
people was checked in England, and war was declared, which ended in the
frightful victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo.
Burke's best known work of this period is his _Reflections on the French
Revolution_, which he polished and revised again Essay on and again before
it was finally printed. This ambitious literary essay, though it met with
remarkable success, is a disappointment to the reader. Though of Celtic
blood, Burke did not understand the French, or the principles for which the
common people were fighting in their own way[198]; and his denunciations
and apostrophes to France suggest a preacher without humor, hammering away
at sinners who are not present in his congregation. The essay has few
illuminating ideas, but a great deal of Johnsonian rhetoric, which make its
periods tiresome, notwithstanding our admiration for the brilliancy of its
author. More significant is one of Burke's first essays, _A Philosophical
Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_, which
is sometimes read in order to show the contrast in style with Addison's
_Spectator_ essays on the "Pleasures of the Imagination."
Burke's best known speeches, "On Conciliation with America," "American
Taxation," and the "Impeachment of Warren Hastings," are still much studied
in our schools as models of English prose; and this fact tends to give them
an exaggerated literary importance. Viewed purely as literature, they have
faults enough; and the first of these, so characteristic of the Classic
Age, is that they abound in fine rhetoric but lack simplicity.[199] In a
strict sense, these eloquent speeches are not literature, to delight the
reader and to suggest ideas, but studies in rhetoric and in mental