Moral CHAPTER XI THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1740) THE Age of Dryden, as we have seen, was characterized by a reaction against Puritanism and by the development of Classicism. The former movement tended toward frivolity, licentiousness, and practical if not theoretical irreligion. Looseness of life did not necessarily involve unbelief, but it did involve practical unrighteousness. The classical movement tended toward repression of emotion, of imagination, and of originality — toward undue emphasis upon the literary value of mere reason, and toward formal excellence and finish of style. With reference to these movements the religious and the literary the Age of Pope marked both reaction and Reaction advance. The reaction appeared chiefly on the religious side, and it was a reaction which meant decided improvement in life and incidentally in the moral tone of literature. The Age of Pope was not a religious age, it did not experience any great revival of morality or of Christian zeal; but it did perceive that the previous generation had gone too far, that its spirit was destructive of human society and of the highest values in literature, and that effort must be made to bring back a purer moral tone. This effort was consciously and effectively made, and the literature of this age became in consequence vastly cleaner, both in thought and in speech. There was no reversion to Puritanism; the men of the time had little taste for that. But there was a reaction against moral lawlessness; and the age took a middle ground between Puritan strictness and THE AGE OF POPE (1700-1740) 197 Restoration licentiousness. produced an age of pure living and of high ideals. Corruption and bribery were common in politics. Drunkenness, brutality, and crime were prevalent to an alarming extent. The reformation was perhaps too much a matter of form, of profession, and of theory, rather than of spirit. Nevertheless, there was a gain, and the reaction against Restoration excess involved a real advance toward a recognition of higher standards. It can not be said that this Classicism This reaction on the moral side was accompanied by an unquestionable advance on the side of Classicism. Conformity to recognized literary authority was still further emphasized, individuality was still further re- Advance in pressed; and the age doubtless felt that this, like the effort for greater morality, was in the interest of social order as well as for the advantage of literature. Originality became less and less; order, regularity, critical authority, became more and more. Imagination and passion were restrained, in order that mere expression might be polished and refined to the last degree. The effort was, not to say something new, but to say something better than it had ever been said before. It might be supposed that this would be utterly fatal to great literary creation, and its tendency unquestionably was in that direction. Nevertheless, the age did great things for literature, and even opened up new literary highways. This is probably due chiefly to the fact that the age possessed a number of men of remarkable literary ability, too great to be altogether bound and hindered even by the rules which they had set for themselves. Genius has not seldom found its own instinctive way, in spite of theory and prescription. Moreover, this age was already beginning to be unconsciously stirred by certain human forces that were later to overthrow Classicism and to shape the literature of the coming time. Nor must we think of Classicism itself as altogether a negative influence. It had positive virtues which helped to give an added efficiency to literature, and which, as we shall see, were to make real contribution toward literary development. The worst effect of Classicism was felt in poetry. Great poetry lives and moves in the realm of passion and imagination; and when these are restrained, its and Poetry wings are clipped. There is no poet of the age, therefore, spreading "ample pinion," and Classicism Classicism Sailing with supreme dominion But there is at least one-Alexander Pope- who spreads abroad the ample fan of the peacock's gorgeous feathers and struts with measured stride across the smooth green sward. Prose, on the contrary, drew decided advantage from these same conditions. What it needed and Prose was, not the high passion of Milton or the golden imagery of Jeremy Taylor, but just those qualities of regularity, precision, directness, and reason which this age was so well fitted to provide. As a prose period, this is one of the most notable in English literature; and to its classical influences we owe it in large measure that our modern English prose approaches the admirable clearness and lucidity of the French rather than the comparative formlessness of the German. Our own earlier prosewriters, great as many of them undoubtedly were, were headed in the wrong direction; and English prose style needed just such discipline and guidance as it was now to receive, in order that it might henceforth take its own proper path and develop its own natural powers. Prose has not altogether ceased to soar, on due occasion; but in the main, its proper function is pedestrian, and its daily business is to serve as the useful servant of the world's thought. In view of this important mission, it was decid edly worth while that one period of our literary history should be devoted chiefly to learning the lesson of a serviceable prose style. That lesson the literature has never forgotten. The most unique genius of the age, and beyond doubt its great prose-writer, was Jonathan Swift. He was of English parentage, and of decidedly English character and genius; but the accidents of his life determined that he should be much associated with Ireland, and Jonathan this association was to have important bearings Swift: Life upon his literary work. He was born in Dublin in 1667, and received his education first at Kilkenny School and afterward at Trinity College, Dublin. It will thus appear that he was Irish by place of birth and by education, and that all of his early life was passed in Ireland. After leaving college, however, he went to England, where he served for nearly ten years as private secretary to Sir William Temple, whom we have already met as one of the prose-writers of the Restoration Period. Temple was a distant relative of Swift, and was doubtless as willing as he was able to be of service to the young man in the beginnings of his literary career. The association, however, was not in all respects a happy one; Swift had a terribly proud and imperious nature and could ill brook the relation of a mere underling to any man. Consequently, he entered the church and became the incumbent of a small Irish parish. Little satisfied with his new life, he soon returned to Temple's service; but on the death of the latter in 1699, he went to Ireland again. A mission for the Archbishop of Dublin finally brought him to London, where his vigorous personality and great literary ability soon made him an almost indispensable political instrument to some of the Tory leaders. They held out to him the hope of a bishopric; but the opposition of Queen Anne is said to have frustrated this plan. His important services were finally rewarded-in a fashion bitterly disappointing to him with the deanery of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. This took him to Ireland again; and there he lived for the remaining thirty years or more of his life. What seemed to him like exile was occasionally broken by visits to his friends in England. After terrible physical suffering and some five years of madness, he died in Dublin in 1745. and Character Swift was a man of astonishing genius, and might have been eminent in almost any intellectual pursuit. He was primarily a man of action, and turned to literaSwift's Genius ture mainly as an instrument for advancing his practical ends. He found it, too, a medium through which he might pour forth the passion of his intense nature and the vivid experience of his strange career. His literary work, therefore, is closely associated with the events of his life and often needs the illumination which those events throw upon it. On the whole, his was a disappointed life, and the note of bitterness and resentment is a familiar one in his writings. Aside from his actual physical ills and personal sorrows, the secret of his pessimism is probably to be found in his proud and imperious temper. He was conscious of immense powers, he felt a half contempt for some of the greatest men of his time even while he was compelled to court their favor; and it was only natural that such a spirit should scorn a patronage that often seemed like unwilling charity and should bitterly resent an ingratitude that blighted his ambitious dreams. His pessimism grew into a gigantic contempt for the whole despicable race of men. His personal grievances were magnified until they distorted for him the true proportions of human life. His own diseased eye discolored his vision of the world. The literary weapon that he knew so well how to wield became an instrument of fierce and scornful vengeance. He carried satire to the extreme of |