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THE AUGUSTAN AGE

(1700-1800)

(AUTHORS IN DETAIL)
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CONTENTS

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

MONARCHIES
 Queen Anne (1702-1714)
 King George I (REIGN 1714- 1727
 King George II (REIGN 1727- 1760
 The First Three Georges
The Industrial Revolution
New Religious Developments
An Age of Elegance
A Public Literature
The Beginnings of Romanticism
Periodical Essay in the 18th Century
 Reasons for its popularity

The Periodical Essays

 Addison and Steel
 Oliver Goldsmith
 Dr. Samuel Johnson
 Daniel Defoe
 Jonathan Swift

Major writers of the Age:

 Daniel Defoe (1660?-1731)
 Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729)
 Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
 Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
 Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
 James Boswell (1740-1795)
 Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
 Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Four Wheels of novels

 Samuel Richardson (1689-1761)
 Tobias Smollet (1721-1771)
 Henry Fielding (1707-1754)
 Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)

Other writers:
 Henry Mackanzie (1745-1831)
 Henry Brooke (1703-1783)
 Fanny Burney (1752-1840)

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GOTHIC FICTION
 Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
 Clara Reeve (1729-1807)
 William Beckford (1760-1844)
 Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
 Mathew Gregory (1775-1818)
 Mrs. Ann Radciffe (1764-1823)

Graveyard School of Poetry

Precursors of romanticism
 James Thomson (1700-1748)
 William Collins (1721-1759)
 William Cowper (1731-1800)
 James Macpherson (1736-1796)
 Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)
 Robert Burns (1759-1796)
 Thomas Percy (1729-1811)
 George Crabbe (1754-1832)
 William Blake (1757-1827)
 Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
 Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

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THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
(1700-1800)
The Eighteenth Century in England wore many faces. Early eighteenth-century
writers, seeing a parallel to the admired age of Roman literature under Emperor Augustus,
called their time "the Augustan Age," and because these writers deliberately followed the
form and content of ancient Greek and Roman models, the period is sometimes known as
"the Neoclassical Age." For reasons we shall see later on, it has also been called "the Age of
Enlightenment," and "the Age of Elegance."

Queen Anne (REIGN 1702-1714) – Anne was born in the reign of her uncle Charles II
who had no legitimate children. Her father James was first in line to the throne. His
Catholicism was unpopular in England so on Charles‘s instructions Anne was raised as a
Protestant. Three years after he succeeded Charles, James was deposed in the "Glorious
Revolution" of 1688. Anne's Protestant brother-in-law William III became the joint monarch
with his wife, Anne's elder sister Mary II. William and Mary had no children. After Mary's
death in 1694, William continued as sole monarch until he was succeeded by Anne upon his
death in 1702. She was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. She too died childless. Under
the terms of the Act of Settlement 1701, she was succeeded by her second cousin George I
of the House of Hanover, who was a descendant of the Stuarts through his maternal
grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter of James I.

King George I (REIGN 1714- 1727) - He was the king of Great Britain and Ireland
from 1st August 1714 until his death in 1727. He was the first English monarch of the House
of Hanover. During his reign, the power of the monarchy diminished and Britain began a
transition to a modern system of Cabinet government led by a Prime Minister. Towards the
end of his reign, the actual power was held by Sir Robert Walpole, Britain‘s first de facto
Prime Minister. George I died on a trip to his native Hanover, where he was buried.

King George II (REIGN 1727- 1760) – George was born and brought up in Northern
Germany and he was the last British monarch born outside Great Britain. A king from 1727,
he exercised little control over the British domestic policy, which was largely controlled by
the Parliament of Great Britain. During the war of the Austrian succession, George
participated at the Battle of Dettington in 1743, and thus became the last British monarch to
lead an army in battle. After his son died unexpectedly in 1757, his grandson George III
became the king after his death.

The Age of Reason

On the whole, this was a century very well pleased with itself. Although wars
continued, Britain was free of the revolutionary heat of the seventeenth century and the
growing doubts and dark divisions of the nineteenth century. The upper classes and the
middle classes in Britain during this age felt that they were living in the best of all possible
worlds.
The complacency of the eighteenth century was due partly to the work of the
scientists and philosophers who really belonged to the previous century. The age idolized the
mathematician-philosopher Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), whose Mathematical Principles
of Natural Philosophy (1687) provided the framework of a system that seemed capable of
explaining everything in the universe. So great was Newton's influence that Alexander Pope,
one of the greatest poets of the age, was prompted to write, "God said, 'Let Newton be!' and

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all was light." But others besides Newton contributed to the intellectual ferment of the age.
John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Bishop Berkeley's A
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), David Hume's Treatise of
Human Nature (1739-40), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau's ideas on the social contract and the
"noble savage" were just a few of the many influences on the intellectual climate of the age.
It was the work of Newton and others that led to the philosophy of the universe as a
smoothly running machine first set in motion by a vaguely benevolent deity. So long as man
understood the working of this machine, he could be said to be the master of it. This rational
religion was known as Deism. Indeed, it is because human reason and the watchword
"commonsense" played so large and significant a role in this period that it is often referred to
as "the Age of Reason."

The Industrial Revolution

During the latter half of the century British prosperity was increasing rapidly because
of what we have come to call the "Industrial Revolution"–that is, the increasing use of
machinery and steam power in the manufacture of goods. What previously had been made by
hand, often by people working at home, was now manufactured on an infinitely larger scale
in mills and factories. Though the Industrial Revolution eventually took hold throughout the
western world, Britain easily led the way because she had the necessary coal and iron ore, her
inventors designed many of the new machines, and her growing empire gave her large
overseas markets. This led to a rapid increase in population as well as in national wealth.
But with all this sheer gain there came some sad losses, as many writers were quick to
perceive. William Blake (1757-1827), the poet, artist, and mystic, referred with horror to "the
dark, satanic mills." Much of England, especially in the north and the Midlands, was rapidly
transformed into a blackened, ruined countryside of mine shafts, slag heaps, tall chimneys
pouring out smoke, and horrible industrial towns in which people lived and worked in
appalling conditions. All this, against which writer after writer protested, was not observed
and felt in its full force until the next century, but already in the eighteenth century its
shadow began to creep over the country.

New Religious Developments

At this time, the interest of those who worried about, or were displaced by, the new
industrialism was captured by religious reformers such as John and Charles Wesley. In the
early part of the eighteenth century, Puritan sentiments were played down and most
Englishmen belonged to the Church of England. The Church of England during the
eighteenth century existed, for the most part, in a state of sleepy conformity. Many
clergymen, some of them the younger sons of aristocratic landowners who could not provide
for them out of their estates but could offer them church "livings," had several different and
widely separated parishes. Some of these eighteenth-century churchmen did not really
believe in the Christian faith at all, regarding it as something intended for simple, uneducated
minds. Laurence Sterne (1713-1768), for example, the great humorous novelist, was a
parson, but he can hardly be accepted as a Christian believer. As soon as he became a
successful writer he spent long periods hundreds of miles away from his church and his
vicarage.
Such official indifference to the burning realities of religion inevitably produced a
sharp reaction. The brothers Wesley began to convert people to a fervently evangelical type
of Christianity. Throughout the century the various nonconformist sects which had developed
were joined by more and more of the working folk and the members of the new middle
classes created by the Industrial Revolution, especially in the Midlands and the north of

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England, where the growth of industry late in the period was to send the population figures
soaring.
During this period, then, we have an elegant, complacent, skeptical, and cynical upper
class, a growing number of earnestly pious and intensely respectable people belonging to the
middle and artisan classes, and finally the poor—sharply drawn not only by the writers of the
time but also by the artist William Hogarth (1697-1764) Hogarth, whose great talent was
exact realism, shows us a panorama of the lives of all classes. We learn from Hogarth, as we
do from the novelists of the day, that life was often rough and rowdy, filled with crude sports
and heavy drinking.

An Age of Elegance
Largely oblivious to the problems of the poor, a small minority, waited upon by
servants who were themselves often waited upon by humbler servants, lived lives which were
more than comfortable. Many of them lived on a superb scale. Never, for example, in
European history do we see men and women so elaborately artificial, so far removed from
natural appearance, as these men and women of the eighteenth century. The men wore wigs,
which often had to be curled every day, and with them gaily colored and lace-trimmed satin
coats and waistcoats, silk stockings, and buckled shoes. The women often had immense
coiffures of powdered hair and enormous hooped skirts and were carried to their parties in
sedan chairs. An evening party in high society, taking place in a room lit with hundreds of
candles, must have been an impressive spectacle.
These, people lived better in some ways than similar people have done since. We
know from pictures of the age and from the eighteenth-century houses, furniture, and
domestic utensils still in existence that the outward trappings of their lives were truly
magnificent. The domestic architecture, from the Queen Anne style to the late Georgian, has
probably never been equaled. The interior decoration of the Adam brothers, the furniture de-
signed by Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton—all these were magnificent.
Only a small minority, however, lived on this superb scale. The mass of the people
did not wear wigs (which cost a great deal of money) and satin coats and breeches and silk
stockings; they did not sit on chairs designed by Chippendale and Hepplewhite, nor drink out
of beautiful silver tankards. They dressed plainly, wore their own hair unpowdered, and
drank out of clumsy mugs and cups.
The middle class, struggling to establish itself, found its ideal social center in the
coffeehouses, which came to occupy the large blank space between the town houses of the
aristocrats and the rough and roaring taverns of the Elizabethans and Jacobeans. The
coffeehouses offered the same services to professional middle-class Londoners that clubs did
later, and still do. So City men–financiers, merchants, ship-owners–met at Lloyd's
coffeehouse, where Lloyd's, the most famous insurance firm in the world, was established
Writers, from John Dryden to Alexander Pope, generally met at Will's.
Other coffeehouse patrons, who might be City men, politicians, lawyers, writers, and
the more free-and-easy aristocrats, foregathered at White's (now a rather exclusive club), St.
James's, the Grecian, Buttons, and the Turk's Head. At such places, news could be gathered
and exchanged, some business conducted, political secrets whispered. There also might be
serious discussion of religion, philosophy, literature, domestic and foreign affairs, as well as
a good deal of pleasant or malicious gossip. The result of this coffeehouse habit was a
knitting together of the middle and upper sections of English society, which was a
considerable benefit to the writer, among others, and to literature. It helped, too, to create a
feeling, characteristic of this century, that this closely knit and highly articulate society
represented a new but enduring civilization, not unlike but superior to the ancient civili-
zations of Greece and Rome. This civilization belonged only to persons of some position,

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wealth, and influence; the common people were still a long way outside it. If you were
reasonably fortunate in your status, however, you could settle down to enjoy "the best of all
possible worlds."

The Beginnings of Romanticism

In his masterpiece, the Life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell (1740-1795) tells
about an old acquaintance of Johnson's who said that he too might have been a philosopher
except that "cheerfulness kept breaking in." Now something had to break into this eighteenth
century in Britain, for it was altogether too calm and complacent, too sure of itself and its
standards, too contemptuous of the past and of all that earlier men had thought and felt, too
easily convinced that a new and superior age had arrived, too certain that it was the best of all
possible worlds. It ignored or denounced too often the secret inner life of men, their hidden
dreams and desires and hopes all that belonged essentially to men as individuals and not as
members of a society. Even the writers who seem to us typically eighteenth-century figures
show that the pressure of this conformity was too much for them: Jonathan Swift, for all his
powerful intellect, has a suggestion of some dark madness in his savage satires, and Johnson,
for all his sociability and delight in good talk, is at heart melancholy and fearful, enjoying,
the lighted dinner table, all the more because of the threatening darkness.
What breaks through into this public literature of an ordered and complacent society
is the other side of man's life, his inner world of wonder and strange feeling, all that cannot be
expressed in a social mood of philosophic calm. This new literature belongs not to what is
public and classical but to what is essentially private, and thus is called romantic. This
breakthrough, which was gradual and began about the middle of the century, showed itself in
various ways. It showed itself in the curious hothouse sentimentality of Richardson's novels,
soon to conquer Europe, and in the strongly personal mixture of humor and sentiment in
Laurence Sterne's work. It showed itself in the publication of Bishop Percy's Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry (1765), a collection of ballads that had a tremendous influence on the
whole Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century. It showed itself in the new
taste—led by that apparently typical eighteenth-century dilettante, Horace Walpole (1717-
1797)—for ruins and Gothic castles and tales of mystery. It showed itself in the fashion
during the latter half of the century for founding strange, secret societies interested in magic
and in mysterious rites.
But this breakthrough was most obvious in poetry. Though they are all in many ways
typical eighteenth-century men, Thomas Gray (1716-1771), Oliver Goldsmith, and
William Cowper (1731-1800) in their best verse began to show the other side of life. Robert
Burns (1759-1796), the national poet of Scotland, alternated between verse in the acceptable
eighteenth-century style and impassioned lyrics or comic-pathetic narrative poems about the
peasantry that are undoubtedly Romantic in feeling. And then there was William Blake, an
astonishing character and one of the world's great originals, who in his earliest poems seems
like another Elizabethan but then flashes out, completely disregarding the taste of the time, in
work that blazes with his own highly original genius. By this time the Romantic Age had
almost arrived.
The last years of the eighteenth century were altogether different from its first years.
Nothing was certain after the destructive fury of the French Revolution. Britain was sharply
divided between those who feared and denounced the French Revolution and those who
welcomed it. Old values and standards seemed to vanish in the smoke of burning buildings
and the roar of Napoleon's cannons, which were heard everywhere in Europe from Spain to
Moscow. Anything could happen now: it was that kind of world, that kind of universe. The
social order was no longer as stable as it once had been. The old aristocracy was giving way
to a rising middle class, and there was increasing sympathy for the underprivileged classes.

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Ideas of political freedom, of independence, of human brotherhood and man's "natural rights"
had become more and more widespread, as revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean
had attested. A new spirit was abroad. Gone were the philosophic calm, the complacency, the
exultation of good taste, the curled wigs and lacy satin coats, the coffeehouse wits and critics
and their Tatlers and Spectators: the whole age was as dead as Queen Anne.

Romanticism and the French Revolution

It is in some ways impossible to understand the Romantic Movement unless it is seen
in the light of the French Revolution. French Revolution is widely recognized as one of the
most influential events of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe, with far
reaching consequences in political, cultural, social, and literary arenas. Although scholars
such as Jeremy Popkin point to more concrete political issues as grounds for the upheaval,
supporters of the Revolution rallied around more abstract concepts of freedom and equality,
such as resistance to the King‘s totalitarian authority as well as the economic and legal
privileges given to the nobility and clergy. It is in this resistance to monarchy, religion, and
social difference that Enlightenment ideals of equality, citizenship, and human rights were
manifested. These beliefs had profound influence on the Romantic poets.
The modern era has unfolded in the shadow of the French Revolution. French society
itself underwent a transformation as feudal, aristocratic, and religious privileges disappeared
and old ideas about tradition and hierarchy were abruptly overthrown under the mantra of
"Liberté, égalité, fraternité". Globally, the Revolution accelerated the rise of republics and
democracies, the spread of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and secularism, the
development of modern political ideologies, and the practice of total war. Some of its central
documents, like the Declaration of the Rights of Man, expanded the arena of human rights to
include women and slaves.
The early Romantic period thus coincides with what is often called the "age of
revolutions"--including, of course, the American (1776) and the French (1789) revolutions-
-an age of upheavals in political, economic, and social traditions, the age which witnessed the
initial transformations of the Industrial Revolution. A revolutionary energy was also at the
core of Romanticism, which quite consciously set out to transform not only the theory and
practice of poetry (and all art), but the very way we perceive the world.
The Revolution affected first- and second-generation Romantics in different ways.
First-generation poets such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and
Robert Southey, the most well-known members of the “Lake District” school of poetry,
initially sympathized with the philosophical and political principles of the Revolution,
particularly as expressed by William Godwin in his Inquiry into Political Justice (1793).
Wordsworth famously chronicled his response to the war in his Prelude, although the relevant
passages were not published in full until after his death in 1850. One shorter section,
however, made its way into print in 1809 under the title “French Revolution, as it
Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement.” The phrasing of the title indicates
Wordsworth‘s turn toward more conservative politics later in life, particularly after the
bloody turn of the revolution.
According to Simon Bainbridge, Wordsworth and Coleridge translated the
Revolution‘s emphasis on man‘s equality into the ―language of the common man‖ and ―low‖
subject matter found in Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth‘s everyday language and subject
choices look like a literary revolution that mirrors the historical revolution by breaking down
the boundaries that separated poetry - with its elevated characters, plots, and diction - from
ordinary representation.
While first-generation Romantics saw their revolutionary fervor tempered by the
gruesome turn of the revolution from the execution of Louis XVI through the Reign of

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Terror, second-generation Romantics such as Lord Byron and Percy Shelley held to the
Revolution‘s principles in a more idealistic, if somewhat cautious way. Shelley, for instance,
portrays rebellious events in poems such as Prometheus Unbound(1820), Swellfoot the
Tyrant (1820), and Hellas (1822), yet he avoids direct representation of revolutionary action
through a mythological framework. Shelley sought to promote the ideals of liberty and
equality through non-violent revolution. Similarly Byron‘s portrayal of inevitable, cyclical
patterns of violence is representative of an inability to break free of the past. The revolution
in ―Marino Faliero‖ is doomed by the hero‘s inability to overcome the past, which leads the
rebels to mimic the actions of the aristocracy which they are trying to overthrow. This cynical
view of radical action is reflective of Byron‘s own attitudes toward the French Revolution,
particularly his youthful idolization of Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he later criticized for
regressing from liberty and democracy into monarchical dictatorship.

Periodical Essay in the 18th Century

The 18th century witnessed the unprecedented development of the periodical essay. It
had its birth towards the close of the 17th century and reached its peak in the 18th century
especially in the hand of Addison and Steele.
One of the important reasons of its popularity was the fact that it mainly addressed
itself to the middle class. Actually, the Periodical Essays gave the middle class what they
wanted i.e – pleasure and instruction.
The Periodical Essay suited the moral temper of the 18th century. The essayist
strongly supported the campaign against gambling and dwelling and strove to teach a man to
lead a good life. In short, Periodical Essay acted as the moral mentor of the age, which
contributed much to its popularity.

Reasons for its popularity

A great reason for its popularity was the attention paid to the interests of the fairer
sex. The brevity of these Periodical Essays had much to do with its popularity.
The Periodical Essays kept aloof from the political and religious controversies of the
time. The essays were simple, clear, and they had conversational flavor and literature of good
manners which made them popular.

THE PERIODICAL ESSAYS

The development of the Periodical Essays was due to the rise of Journalism and it was
Steele and Addison who brought it to perfection and established it as a literary form.
Steele began ‗The Tatler‘ in 1709 which was published tri – weekly on Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Saturdays. It aimed at reforming manners and morals of men and women. It
suddenly ceased publication in 1711.
It was followed by ‗The Spectator‘, by far the best of all the Periodical Essays. It ran
from March 1, 1711 to Dec 6, 1712 as a collaborative project. It was then discontinued and
18 months later restarted in June 1714 by Addison alone and issued thrice a week from 18
June to 20 December 1714. Its complete form consists of 635 essays of which Steele wrote
240, Addison 274 and remaining by his various friends. In ―The Spectator‖ Addison
contributed 18 essays on Paradise Lost with a view to help the readers appreciate Milton and
his epic better. But the greatest aim was to laugh at the follies of the ladies.
Addison and Steel also founded the Guardian in 1713. Another great name in the
history of Periodical Essays was Dr. Johnson, who started the periodical ‗The Rambler’ in
imitation of 'The Spectator' which appeared twice weekly (Tuesday and Saturdays). It was

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followed by ―The Adventure‖ and “The Idler‖. The essays published in these periodical
were concerned with serious literature criticism and moral problems.

Goldsmith also wrote a number of essays including a series entitled ―The Citizen of the
World. “Bee‖, and his best essays originally appeared in The Public Ledger as ―Chinese
Letters‖, Richard Steele‘s later venture into periodical journalism was ―The Englishman‖
(political) and ―The Lover‖ comprises 40 of his most attractive essays. His other short lived
periodicals, such as ―The Reader”, ―Town Talk” and ―The Plebeian”, contain matter of
considerable political importance. His last extended literary work was ―The Theatre‖, a
biweekly periodical.

Dr. Samuel Johnson published three series of periodical essays. The Rambler was a series of
208 periodical essays published every Tuesday and Saturday. Johnson contributed twenty-
nine papers to The Adventurer. He published The Idler, which appeared weekly in The
Universal Chronicle.

Daniel Defoe – He was born in London about 1660, son of a butcher. He was a man of an
inexhaustible practical energy. After several vicissitudes (ups and down) in his young life, he
became prosperous at the age of 35. He now became a pamphleteer in support of King
William and Whigs. His first significant work which is a satire against Tories is "The
Shortest Way with Dissenters" (belongs early with the reign of Queen Anne). For this he
also faced imprisonment, where he began 'The Review', a news paper which he continued
for 11 years and whose department, called The Scandal Club, was an inspiration for The
Tatler to Steele.

Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) – The life of Swift is just a living tragedy. He wrested political
powers from the hands of the Tories and used it to insult the very men who had helped him
and who held his fate in his hand. By his dominant personality he exercised a curious power
over women and used it brutally to make them feel their inferiority. Being loved supremely
by two good women he brought sorrow and death to both, and endless misery to himself.
His first notable work, 'The Battle of the Books' is a keen satire on both the parties.
He finished his 'A tale of Tub' which is also a keen satire on various churches. It takes a
form of a burlesque history of three brothers, Peter (the catholic), Martin (Lutherans) and
Jack (Dissenters).
When he returned to Ireland he began the last act in the tragedy of his life he drew
towards insanity and his best known literary work 'Gulliver's Travel' was done there.
He made friends with Addison who called him perhaps rightly, "The greatest genius
of the age". His 'Journal to Stella' is interesting for its record of the minor details of the life
of Swift and of London in his day. He also drew close to Pope and other Tory writers, and
formed what they called 'Scribblers Club'. In 1713 he received the unwelcomed gift of the
deanship of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin and the next year, when the queen died and the
Tory ministry fell he withdrew to Dublin as he himself bitterly said, "To die like a poison
rat in a hole" [He said for himself]
In London he became acquainted with Hester, Vanhomtigh, The 'Vanessa' of his
longest poem – 'Cadenus and Vanessa' Miss Hester, like 'Stella' was infatuated with Swift
and like her followed him to Ireland and for 9 years, he lived a 'double life' between the two.
'Venessa' died probably of a broken heart and Stella also followed a few years later.
Swift is the greatest of English Satirist who is one of the most powerful intellectuals
of all English writers. His pamphlet was called as 'Drapier's Letter'.

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Grub Street – Early 19th century was in reality a street famous for its impoverished
―hack writer‖ aspiring poets, and low publisher is book sellers according to Johnson‘s
Dictionary – ―inhabited by writers of smell histories, dictionaries temporary poems whence
any mean production is called Grub Street. In modern times the street no longer exists but has
since became a pejorative term for impoverished hack writers and end writings of low literary
values.‖
Richard Steele – Richard Steel‘s later venture into periodical journalism was The
Englishman (political), The Lover (comprises 40 of his most attractive essays). His other
short lived periodicals, such as The Reader, Town Talk and The Plebeian, contain matter
of considerable political importance. His last extended literary work was The Theatre, a
biweekly periodical.

ALEXANDER POPE
(1688–1744)
Pope's poetry reveals a deep and discriminating passion for the things he loved in his
civilization, and a lively, lashing scorn for whatever threatened it. His world was a more
manageable one than ours. In Pope's day, there were fewer people to worry about, and, since
he was no democrat, he was able to assume that if a group of wits arid aristocrats set an
acceptable standard, nobody would have to worry about the common people, for whom, after
all. Kings and parliaments were responsible. Furthermore, Pope was not assaulted as we are
by a bewildering variety of cultures, each of which has a claim on the understanding and
sympathy of all the rest, nor was he as impressed as we must be by the magnitude of
historical change. For him the past, or the past that was worth remembering, was Christian
and classic, just as it had been for Milton, although the view he took of the past was not
Milton's view. Pope's was more deeply colored by "rationalism.''
Writers of the nineteenth century, the Romantics, condemned the rationalism of
Pope's age. They found it both dull and stifling. But Pope is not dull, and this fact may help
us to see what the Romantics overlooked: the fact that Pope's poetry was not only much more
than merely reasonable or "correct," to use Pope's word, but that it is passionate poetry. We
judge the loves of other people according to what we are able to love, and a passion for the
civilization of their time was not common among the Romantics.
The English critic, F. R. Leavis, writes: "the 'correctness' of Pope's literary form
derives its strength from a social code and a civilization.
Pope wrote a prefatory “Discourse on Pastoral Poetry” in which he declared that
―simplicity, brevity and delicacy‖ were the proper qualities of a pastoral poem and added : ―If
we could copy nature, it may be useful to take this Idea along with us”.

The Life of Alexander Pope

Pope, who never grew beyond four feet six inches, was ravaged in youth by
tuberculosis of the spine. He was troubled all his life by an aching, twisted body and chronic
headaches. Ill and stunted as he was, he could hardly marry, and he had to undergo much
cruel scoffing at this physical disability. He was born to a Catholic merchant family. In his
age Catholics could neither attend the universities nor hold public office. Nonetheless, he
enjoyed many advantages. His father was modestly well off, and, like Milton's father,
encouraged his son to pursue his studies and to write. Pope was fortunate in finding elders
with whom he could talk about his favorite reading—Homer, Virgil, Spenser, Milton, and
Dryden, his hero, whom he saw as a boy. With almost magical suddenness, he found himself

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the admired junior of a literary circle, the protégé of the aging Wycherley, a famous
playwright, who actually asked him to assist him in revising some of his work. The
publication of his Pastorals in 1709 established Pope as a literary figure. The Essay on
Criticism (1711) and the first version of The Rape of the Lock (1712) brought him fame.
Pope—wrote in an age in which politics and sharp personal attacks were characteristic
of the literary scene. There was continual warfare, not simply among the known writers, but
with the often anonymous hacks who wrote for pay and were collectively known as "Grub
Street" after the thoroughfare on which they lived. Pope could be as savage as the rest when
attacked, but he was truer than many of his contemporaries to the principle that one ought to
attack only the typical follies of the age. He made himself financially independent while in his
early thirties by publishing highly successful translations of the Iliad (1715-20) and the
Odyssey (1725-26). A satiric epic, The Dunciad, first appeared in 1728, and the Essay on
Man, Pope's ambitious attempt to summarize the human condition as he had summed up the
accepted doctrine about criticism, was published in 1733-34.
The life of this intense and lively man was marked by fortunate friendships with many
of the leading figures of the day, among them John Gay (author of The Beggar's Opera),
Jonathan Swift, Dr. Arbuthnot, Lord Oxford (a Prime Minister), and Lord Bolingbroke, who
was for a time Secretary of State and who suggested to Pope the composition of the Essay on
Man. Except for Gay, who was hardly a political figure, all of these men were Tories. Pope
had early had differences with the famous Whig essayist, Joseph Addison, and fell into a
group closer to his inherited sympathies, a group which included many of England's ablest
wits. We have numerous letters and records which vividly suggest the zest with which these
men pursued every political, literary, and philosophic question which the age presented. The
figure of Pope was not the least dazzling in this company, and his biographers have had a
hard time finding the man in the midst of the fireworks. The atmosphere of struggle in which
he lived, and the difficulties of every sort that he had to overcome are further complicated by
the tactics he adopted to make sure that his powers and his fame were properly imaged in the
eyes of the world.
In 1718 Pope rented a villa at Twickenham on the Thames River, and he made this
estate, with its magnificent garden and grotto, one of the most -famous of the day. Here he
found time not simply for an enormous volume of work but for friends and visitors as well.
Throughout his life he made a place for himself by the sheer force of his mind, and he died a
widely honored man.
Pope's qualities are difficult to sum up. The poet Swinburne wrote, "What a spirit it
was! How fiery, bright, and dauntless!" And the British critic F. R. Leavis speaks of Pope as
at once "polite and profound," "elegant and insolent." He was all these things and more. An
acquaintance with him greatly enlarges our sense both of the possibilities of the English
language and of civilization itself. Pope's age was primarily an age of prose, and he wrote
only poetry; yet his influence upon other writers was so great, both in his own time and later,
that we speak today of the Age of Pope.

Windsor Forest:- It was published in 1713, it is a kind of descriptive and reflective

poetry- Dr. Johnson called it as a ―Local Poetry‖ - and it goes back to Denham‘s “Cooper’s
hill‖ and Waller‘s briefer poem ―On St. James Park‖.
Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day(1713) : It is an exercise in the irregular ode in the manner
of Dryden‘s odes.
Two early poems written in stanza form are the ―Ode on Solitude‖ and ―The Dying
Christian to his soul”.

Essay on Criticism

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The Essay on Criticism, published in 1711, when Pope was only twenty-three,
consists of three parts and a total of 744 lines. Its summary of art of poetry was first given by
Horace. Part I is quite theoretical in content and discusses Pope's concept of nature, the rules
we derive from nature, the importance of wit, and the merits of ancient and modern writers,
topics much discussed in Pope's day. In Part II Pope deals with some of the difficulties of
practical criticism. Part III describes what Pope regarded as ideal criticism and the ideal
critic. The first portion of Part II follows below.

Of all the causes which conspire to blind

Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules,
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
Whatever Nature has in worth denied,
She gives in large recruits0 of needful pride;
For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find
What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind:
Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defense,
And fills up all the mighty void of sense.
If once right reason drives that cloud away,
Truth breaks upon us with resistless day.
Trust not yourself; but your defects to know,
Make use of every friend—and every foe.

The Rape of the Lock

Although Pope was often quarrelsome, he had many friends to whom he showed the
kindly side of his nature. On one notable occasion he attempted unsuccessfully to act as
peacemaker. Because a foppish young baron named Lord Petre had snipped a cur] from the
head of a Miss Arabella Fermor and refused to give it up. there arose between the two families
a quarrel which threatened to become a feud. Pope's friend, John Caryll, suggested that he
write a poem about this trivial incident to show the absurdity of all the excitement. The-result
was "The Rape of the Lock," a mock-heroic, or mock epic, poem.
Pope himself described a mock epic as "using a-.vast force to lift a feather." Thus he
wrote his poem in the grand epic style of the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and Paradise Lost,
and filled it with amusing parallels to Homer, Virgil, and Milton. By recalling parallel
situations of tragic or heroic importance in famous epic poems, he emphasized the triviality of
his own subject. A card game, for example, is treated as if it were a battle outside the walls of
Troy, though Pope's setting is "the level green" of the card table. Instead of being mortally
wounded from the spears of Homeric warfare, the beaux fall dead before the angry glances of
the ladies. Just before the lock is cut, sylphs gather to defend it just as the angels gather to
defend Adam and Eve from Satan in Paradise Lost. Because Pope always maintains just the
right degree of sympathy with the human characters in his poem, none of these parallels to
the classical epic overload the poem or seem too weighty for Pope's delicate joke to bear.
The poem is written in five cantos, but because of its great length only a portion of it
is given here. Canto I opens with a formal statement of the theme—"what mighty contests
rise from trivial things"—and invokes the Muse to inspire the poet. Belinda, heroine of the
poem, is visited by the sylph Ariel who warns her that some dread fate hangs over her head. In
Canto II, Belinda, on a pleasure boat on the Thames, is being conducted with other young

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fashionables to the palace of Hampton Court. An adventurous baron, admiring two of
Belinda's curls, determines to obtain them. Belinda's protecting sylph Ariel exhorts a host of
other airy beings to come to Belinda's defense.

Canto V
In Canto IV, Umbriel, a melancholy sprite, brings a bag (similar to the bag of winds
once held by Ulysses) in which are contained "the force of female lungs, sighs, sobs, and
passions, and the war of tongues." These he empties over the head of Belinda, who
immediately bursts into loud lamentations on the loss of her lock. She then calls upon Sir
Plume to aid her in regaining her lock. This ineffectual fop swears the favorite oaths of the
time—"Zounds! Plague on it! Prithee, pox!"—but fails to move the baron.
Then, in the beginning of Canto V, Clarissa urges good sense and good humor, but in
vain. The story concludes with a mighty battle between the belles and the beaux.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH
(1728–1774)
Few writers in all English literature have known such amazing versatility as Oliver
Goldsmith. It is remarkable that a man who was to achieve lasting fame in four different
types of literature turned to writing only as a last resort, after unsuccessfully engaging in a
variety of other endeavors.
Like Steele and Swift, Goldsmith was born in Ireland, and, like Swift and Johnson, he
knew the humiliating compulsions of poverty. His family was much like the primrose family
of his novel, The Vicar of Wakefield-"generous, credulous, simple, and inoffensive," easy
marks for the unscrupulous. Goldsmith's progress through school and college was punctuated
by erratic behavior, but he was finally granted a degree from Dublin's Trinity College. After
bungling his chance for the ministry (some say he put an end to his ecclesiastical possibilities
by appearing before the examining bishop in scarlet trousers), he gambled away money
borrowed from an uncle to study law in London. He was forgiven and granted more money,
this time to study medicine at the University of Leyden. A year later he set out on a walking
tour of the Continent "with a guinea in his pocket, one shirt on his back, and a flute in his
hand." In 1756 he returned to London, penniless, and drifted into the hack writing which paid
him much better than the literary work for which he is remembered.
He did some writings for The Monthly review (1757) and published his first book,
The Memoirs of a Protestant condemned to the Galleys, etc. (1758), translated from the
French.
Goldsmith's impracticality and irresponsibility kept him in unrelieved poverty
throughout his life. Johnson's devotion to him was the envy of Boswell, whose jealousy is
apparent in his comments about this "coarse and vulgar man. A curious, old, pedantic fellow
with some genius."
Seldom profound but never boring, Goldsmith overcame harsh circumstances and,
writing with wit, whimsy, and lightheartedness, presented a light, cool picture of life. His
prose style is esteemed for its unique intermingling of formal and colloquial language and his
own personal brand of grace, clarity, and kindliness. David Garrick, the actor, in an epitaph
written in jest, characterized the writer and his work in saying: "Here lies Nolly Goldsmith,
for shortness called 'Noll,'/ Who wrote like an angel and talked like poor Poll.

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To Goldsmith belongs the distinction of producing essays, a poem, a novel, and a

comedy that are still read and enjoyed. His first real success was the collection of essays
entitled The Citizen of the World. This was followed by the novel, The Vicar of Wakefield,
which tells a story of English country life. In 1770 The Deserted Village was published. A
nostalgic portrayal of life in an Irish village probably similar to the one in which the poet
himself grew up, this poem expressed the growing interest in the middle and late eighteenth
century in rural settings and humble lives, and in both subject matter and sentiment pointed
forward to the Romantic movement. She Stoops to Conquer or the Mistake of the night,
Goldsmith's rollicking and robust comedy, restored liveliness and wit to English drama.
Although Johnson sometimes ridiculed his friend "Goldy," he recognized and
generously praised his literary powers. About the personal failing and vanities that Goldsmith
was never able to overcome, Samuel Johnson remarked: "Let not his frailties be remembered;
he was a very great man." And it was Johnson who wrote the inscription for the memorial to
Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey: "He touched nothing that he did not adorn.

The Citizen of the World

The eighteenth century was a period that attempted to view itself-its customs,
conventions, life, and world-with clear-sighted vision and perfect perspective unblurred by
emotion. In The Citizen of the World Goldsmith undertook to view his world with such
perspective. For this purpose he used the device of an imaginary Chinese philosopher, Lien
Chi Altangi, who, during a visit to England, wrote letters to another Oriental sage in which
he described the English people and their ways. The idea of using a worldly-wise Oriental as
his spokesman probably was suggested to Goldsmith by the wave of enthusiasm for Far
Eastern culture which was sweeping Europe at the time.
This series of essays consists of over 123 letters which originally were published in a
newspaper in 1760-61. Enlivened by Goldsmith's individuality and charm, the letters follow
the tradition of Addison's and Steele's Spectator in their light touch and their use of gentle
satire. Greatly admired, they won the praise even of Dr. Johnson, the literary dictator of the
age, who asked: "Is there a man, sir, now, who can pen an essay with such ease and elegance
as Goldsmith?"

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RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN
(1751–1816)
If heredity means anything, Richard Brinsley Sheridan had to be a literary man. His
Irish grandfather was a school master, scholar, and friend of Jonathan Swift; his mother was a
novelist and playwright; his father an actor, theater-manager, and successful teacher of
elocution. Sheridan was born in Dublin, but, because of financial difficulties, his family
moved to England when he was still a boy. The same financial difficulties prevented
Sheridan from receiving much of a formal education, but despite this early disadvantage he
managed to make his mark in several different careers-as a playwright, theater-manager,
politician and Member of Parliament, and dashing man about town.
It was as a dashing man about town that Sheridan eloped in 1773 with Elizabeth Ann
Linley, a beautiful concert singer and the toast of fashionable society, over whom he fought
two duels with a persistent rival. Two years later, combining his perceptive observations of
high society, his familiarity with stagecraft, and his gift for language, he produced his first
theatrical success, The Rivals. It became an enormous success. Celebrated at the age of
twenty-four as the writer of one of the best comedies in the English language, he was deemed
"a considerable man" even by the estimable Dr. Johnson, who promptly sponsored Sheridan
for membership in the celebrated Literary Club. The following year, Sheridan became part
owner of the famous Drury Lane Theater in London, and at twenty-six he wrote and
produced The School for Scandal. In 1779 The Critic, also highly successful, was produced.
After this time, although he continued to direct the Drury Lane Theater through years
of vicissitudes, Sheridan turned his attention to politics. He entered Parliament in 1780, and
his brilliant use of language soon won him wide recognition as an orator. For over twenty-
five years Sheridan was a leading political figure in an era which boasted such distinguished
Parliamentarians as William Pitt, Edmund Burke, and Charles James Fox.
Well established in the highest political and social circles, Sheridan enjoyed living in
an extravagant manner that was far beyond his means. The Drury Lane Theater supported his
fashionable life for many years, but Sheridan's complicated and irregular business practices
eventually caught up with him. During the quarter of a century he was a Member of
Parliament, he could not be sent to debtor's prison. As soon as he lost his seat in the House of
Commons, however, his troubles began, and not even auctioning off his property could save
him from the threat of arrest. Sheridan's last days were spent in poverty, but his death in 1816
was the occasion of an elaborate funeral and burial with great public honor in Westminster
Abbey.

The Rivals
The history of English high comedy has had an interesting pattern. It has normally
flowered at the end of an era, and, after Shakespeare, most of its great playwrights have been
Irish. About one hundred years after Shakespeare's best comedies (such as Twelfth Night, As
You Like It, and Much Ado About Nothing) were written, Dublin-educated William Congreve
crowned the Restoration period with such brilliant comedies as Love for Love (1695) and
The Way of the World (1700). Toward the end of the eighteenth century, following a long
spate of hopelessly sentimental domestic dramas, Dublin-born Richard Brinsley Sheridan
asked English society to laugh at itself in plays such as The Rivals and The School for
Scandal. Finally, after another arid epoch of middle-class melodrama, audiences at the end of
the nineteenth century saw a rebirth of the high comedy of manners in the works of Irishmen
Oscar Wilde and, more important, George Bernard Shaw.

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Sheridan's The Rivals is certainly one of the milestones in this tradition. By

Introducing social satire, pungent wit, and sparkling dialogue, Sheridan, along with Oliver
Goldsmith, emulated the brilliant comedies of the early.
The characters in The Rivals have come to Bath to have fun, and Sheridan's idea is to
have fun at their expense. The play is ingenious and ingenuous, and, in some respects, as
mixed up as Mrs. Malaprop's rhetoric. There is much confusion, but just as the high point of
confusion is reached over who is dueling with whom, who knows whose dual roles, and who
is fooling whom (or himself) about whom (or what), the characters sort themselves out, and
all's well in the artificial but lively society of eighteenth-century Bath.

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